Dead Matter

25

Being pissed off did a lot for my clarity, or at least my sense of direction. I had no trouble finding my way out of the castle this time and back down the cobblestone trail leading out to the Gibson-Case Center. I headed off in the direction of Nicholas’s control room, stopping only long enough to grab a few cupcakes at one of the restaurants to boost my sugar back up after my battle with the book. The living statues guarding the elevators didn’t even budge as I passed them and headed up to the brains of the Gibson-Case Center.

“You have amazing cupcakes here,” I said as I walked into the main control room. None of the other vampires working there even looked away from their machines, but Nicholas Vanbrugh looked up from the console where he was working.

“Back so soon?” he asked.

“My blood is up,” I said, shoving another cupcake into my mouth, “even if my blood sugar isn’t yet. Is that a problem?”

“No, actually, it’s fine,” he said and waved me over. “I think I may have something. I think we may be just about ready.”

“Good,” I said. “Me, too.” I popped the last bite of cupcake into my mouth.

Nicholas pointed to a list of lines scrolling down his screen. “I’ve isolated several dozen nodes that have been showing erratic activity,” he said. “Flare-ups.”

“So, what?” I said. “Now that they’re isolated, what happens?”

“Well,” he said, “if the machine world is storing Jane digitally, it wants to compartmentalize her to keep her hidden. It’s what I’d do, anyway. I’ve had the system isolating all those anomalous nodes. Then we group all those nodes together and systematically reboot them until they dump Jane out. Once she’s been set back on the mainframe, Jane should be able to reassemble and all is well. In a perfect world, anyway.”

I was hesitant to ask the next question. “And what happens if it’s not so perfect a world?”

Nicholas hesitated and looked kind of sheepish. “In theory, the bonded nodes could sever their ties, tearing her apart into hundreds of tiny clusters within the machine world and self-delete her byte by byte.”

“In theory…” I repeated.

Nicholas nodded. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Nothing like this has ever happened before, as far as I’m aware. Either way, Jane’s at risk. The longer she stays in there, the more difficult it’s going to be to retrieve her. And any way you look at it, any attempt to free her is going to be risky. I just want you to know what you’re up against. It’s your call.”

I stood there, silent. I didn’t know what to do. I had come in here all fired up, but the thought of losing Jane while in the process of saving her took me aback. I certainly didn’t want to be responsible for leaving my girlfriend stranded in Tron, but I didn’t want to kill her, either. “What the hell am I supposed to do?”

“I can’t decide that for you,” Nicholas said. He fell back to working at the console where he was seated.

My phone buzzed in my pocket. I pulled it out. The text message icon was flashing. I flipped it open.

DO IT.

I looked up from my phone. The spastic movements of one of the surveillance cameras monitoring the control room caught my eye. The camera was twisting back and forth on its flexible neck. I couldn’t identify the movement at first, but then it hit me-the camera was waving at me.

“Let’s do this,” I said, snapping my phone shut.

Nicholas looked up, surprised. “You sure about that?”

I held my phone up and waved it at him. “Pretty sure. That was her.”

Nicholas didn’t waste any time. He stood up and called out to the room. “Everyone out… now! I need the control center cleared.”

“Sir?” a blond-haired technician said, remaining at his post.

Nicholas turned to him, glaring. “Don’t make me ask again. Everyone clear out. Now!”

Like ships jumping to light speed, the crowd of vampires stood and blurred out through the main doors of the control room.

“You think that’s necessary?” I asked.

“For the safety of my people,” Nicholas said. “Yes. Besides, if this goes badly in here, I save a little face sending them out by not making a public spectacle of myself.

“Now, then,” he continued, his spirits seeming to rally with fond memories of Beatriz dancing in his head, “let’s see what we can do to help the damsel in distress.”

“Don’t let Jane hear you call her that,” I whispered, looking around at the cameras in the room. “Your ex isn’t the only one around here willing to give someone a good kick.”

Nicholas started tapping away at the keyboard. “So noted.”

Several windows flashed up on his monitor and I leaned over to try to follow them.

“Here,” he said. “I’ll put them up on the big screen for you. I make less mistakes typing when you’re not watching over my shoulder.”

The wall monitor central to the room blacked out the security feeds to it and Nicholas’s screen now took up the entire wall instead. Even at this size, I couldn’t make heads or tails out of it.

“Let’s pretend I didn’t go to MIT,” I said, “and tell me what you’re doing.”

“Huh?” Nicholas said, looking up. His hands were flying at inhuman speed along several keyboards mounted in the console he was sitting at. “Oh. Sorry. I’m shutting down the anomalous nodes one by one, so they should end up dumping all their packets back into the mainframe. That will hopefully allow them to regroup, and well, we’ll go from there, shall we?”

I watched the wall screen as different sequences of nodes came up on it and closed down. From their color-coding and identifying markers, the nodes looked like they came from every set of building systems.

“Let’s just hope you’re finding all the pieces,” I said, nervous. I was reminded of Star Trek episodes when the Transporter would fail and some mutant creature was formed from pieced-together crew members. I pushed those thoughts out of my head as I watched and waited.

“Almost there,” Nicholas said, giving a final flourish at the keyboard. “Annnnnnd done!”

The remaining machines and consoles in the room whirred to life, drives humming up to speed. The overhead lights dimmed, leaving only the monitors to light the room. Each screen was running through series of images and machine code, all of them forming their own patterns. The sounds of the machinery were getting louder with each passing second.

“Is it working?” I asked.

Nicholas started typing at his keyboard again. “I’m not sure yet.”

After a few more seconds, the low build of Klaxon alarms started pulsing through the room in wave after wave of sound until I could feel it in the center of my brain.

“Why isn’t it working?” I asked over the noise.

“I don’t know,” Nicholas shouted back. His fingers flew like fire across first one keyboard, then another, working several machines at once. “I’m having trouble flushing her from the system. It’s as if…”

Nicholas’s eyes fixed on the screen as he read the code flying by.

“It’s as if what?” I asked. I grabbed his shoulder, feeling the cold radiating through his shirt. “Stop getting all Matrix-y on me.”

Nicholas shook his head and his face returned to normal. “Sorry. I was about to say that it’s like the building is fighting to keep her.”

“Fighting to keep her?” I said. “Jesus Christ. Is this when Skynet takes over?”

“Skynet?” Nicholas asked with a blank stare up at me.

“Never mind,” I said. “You probably were too busy moping through the Terminator years. Listen, just tell your super-smart building to let go of Jane, all right?”

“I’m trying,” he said, typing away at the keyboard again. “You know how hard it was to learn computers with some of the less-than-savory night classes this city offers?”

Something struck me on the back of the neck in a thin line of pain before clattering to the floor.

“Oww,” I said, rubbing the spot while I looked around. “What the hell was that?”

Nicholas stood up from his set of consoles and turned to look past me. He reached down and picked up the object. It was a CD.

“It’s one of our backup systems,” he said, pointing to a long cylinder across the room. It looked like ten coffee cans stacked on top of one another. “It loads a DVD-R with crucial building metrics nightly, burns a copy, and then it gets sent to an off-site storage facility.”

Nicholas started for the main doors we normally used, but the whine of gears firing up stopped him in his tracks.

“What’s that?” I said, moving to join him.

“That would be the main door locks kicking in and securing this room.”

“By themselves?”

“Like I told you,” Nicholas said, looking around the room. “The building is protecting itself.”

“Well, can’t you just, like, turn to mist and seep under the door, get us some help?”

Nicholas shook his head. “This facility was designed by vampires with vampires in mind. Those seals are airtight. Besides, not all of us can actually pull that off.”

Several more discs flew across the room from the device, but this time I was ready and dodged them as they shattered against the wall behind me.

“Don’t you have a safety word?” I asked.

“Remember all that frantic typing you just saw?” he said with testiness in his words. “Didn’t work.” Nicholas was getting more aggravated with each passing second. “Follow me, and keep a steady pace. That machine holds up to five hundred discs.”

Running through the maze of monitors and chairs, the two of us started toward the only other set of open doors, on the opposite wall. They were already closing. I pulled out my shiny new bat, extended it, and prepared to throw it.

“That will never stop those doors,” Nicholas shouted over the sound of sailing discs and their impact explosions. “Even if you get it in between them, it’s only a gap of inches!”

“Not going for the door,” I said and launched my bat end over end. It struck one of the sleek high-tech office chairs, spinning it on its swivel, but also driving it on its wheels toward the closing door. The chair clanged into place between the ever-slimming opening in the doors, catching there, and holding. I ran for it, scooping up my bat and jumping over the chair into the next room. I landed hard and rolled, turning over just in time to see Nicholas making a graceful dive between the doors, landing on his feet. The sound of shattering discs firing off from the backup system kicked in, deafening and constant like the sound of a machine gun. Every once in a while, a stray one would make it through the opening and fly off across the room we were in, crashing into cabinets, vending machines, chairs, and tables.

“We’re in a break room,” I said.

“Thank you for pointing out the obvious,” Nicholas said. “Did you see any other way out of that room?”

I shut my mouth and decided that rather than argue, I would do something constructive. I put my foot against the seat of the chair lodged in the doorway and gave it a shove. The chair slid into the main control room and the door snapped shut, barely allowing me time to pull my foot free of it.

I knelt down in front of the door, checking the locking mechanism to see if there was a way to keep the doors shut, but it was no use. The tech level of these was beyond my usual level of thieving skills.

“Jesus,” I said. “Get out of the criminal business for a few years, and suddenly everything looks foreign.”

The doors started to open again and I grabbed at the two halves of it in a fruitless effort to hold them shut.

“Allow me,” Nicholas said, grabbing them by their handles. The doors slowed as Nicholas struggled to keep them together, but even with his preternatural strength, the pained look on his face showed it was a losing battle. The strain on the doors caused the motors to whine, piercing my ears with their effort. I put my hands over my ears, stepping back from the door.

From behind me, something hit the door next to me with a sharp crack and exploded beside my head. Liquid covered my face and my first thought was blood. I had even felt something cut my cheek. The liquid splashed into my mouth and I couldn’t help but taste it. No, not blood…

Soda?

I looked at the door. Whatever had hit it had slid down to the floor and sure enough, there were the remains of a torn-apart soda can. I turned around. A Transformers version of a soda machine was crossing the room on treaded wheels. It was bulky and lumbering and, as far as soda machines went, full of menace. One of the press buttons for selecting a soda lit up on the front of it. There was the familiar sound of a can dropping, then a soft pfoosh as it launched like lightning out of the machine. Without thinking, I raised my bat and hit it away. It ruptured immediately, but the empty can went sailing. Babe Ruth would have been proud.

“Hey, Nick,” I shouted. “It’s not looking too safe in here, either.”

The vampire turned away from the doors to take a look, and was suddenly covered in an explosion of lettuce, croutons, and what looked like Thousand Island dressing. It appeared as if another of the vending machines-this one with sandwiches and salads-was joining the fray. Its inner multi-tiered carousel whipped into action inside the machine as the various plastic doors for dispensing began to slide open and shut. Now food started flying across the room as well as soda cans.

Nicholas looked down at his ruined suit and something in his face changed to an angry mask, his humanity stretched into a tight, leather mockery of his features. He pulled at the two halves of the door and I heard the metal buckling. I dove out of the way, taking a few heavy hits from some of the flying cans in the process, but I needed to get clear.

Nicholas screamed in rage and the door flew across the room, tearing into the sandwich machine’s plastic carousel. The upper half of it teetered for a moment, and then fell backward as a shower of sparks rose from the remaining half.

Nicholas turned and tossed another piece of door at the soda machine, lodging it in the center of the machine. The soda machine spun itself in circles on its fancy high-tech treads until it slammed into the wall and stayed there, grinding its gears.

I stood up, brushing bits of food and drops of soda off of me. I stepped toward Nicholas, but when I saw the look on his face, I stopped. He snarled without any sign that he recognized me. I backed away, climbing over flipped tables and scattered chairs, trying not to slip on the sticky film of soda that coated everything in the room.

“Easy now, Nicky,” I said. “Remember what Brandon told you about me.”

His eyes were fixated on my face and I suddenly realized why. The cut I had received from the first exploding can. I was bleeding.

I reached up and covered my cheek.

“Remember what Brandon, your lord and master, told you,” I repeated. “I’m for helping, not for eating.”

Nicholas paused for a second, his face still feral-looking. I prayed I was getting through, but before I could find out, the machine from the main control room fired up and started spitting DVD-Rs at us again. Nicholas held an arm up to block his face, but I was glad to see that his focus shifted from me to the other room.

“Follow me,” he said ferocity in his voice, an inhuman growl beneath his words.

I nodded in silence and followed when he dashed back into the control room. By the time I entered, he was already tearing into the DVD-R machine. I headed for the doors, but stopped in my tracks when I heard a familiar voice over the sound system.

“Simon?” There was a vocoder quality to my name, full of electronic clicks and whirs, but the voice was definitely Jane’s. “Simon?” it said again, this time coming from off to my left. I turned to it.

The main display of the control room was taken up by a staticky image of Jane. Her long blond hair waved against a sea of black, the ends of it trailing off to pixilated blocks that faded and vanished into the darkness.

“Jane!” I said, heading over to the screen. On the giant wall monitor, Jane’s head and shoulders were huge, stretching from floor to ceiling.

“Did you get my present?” she asked, the eyes on the monitor turning to focus on where I stood in the room.

I smiled and held up the new bat. “Yes,” I said. “Very shiny.”

“Good,” Jane said, smiling, too. “Tell Wesker I don’t think I’ll be back to work on Monday.”

I collapsed my bat and sheathed it, then slipped off my gloves and held my hands up to the screen, the pulse of its electricity warming them.

“Why don’t you come tell him yourself?” I asked.

“I don’t think I can do that,” she said, her eyes seeming distant, as if she was concentrating very hard on something. Her head and shoulders started to shrink as her size adjusted to match mine, almost as if a camera were pulling back on her. Jane was naked. I didn’t have time to be shocked. She held her hands up to mine. “Just tell him.”

I started to cry, tears rolling down my cheeks. “No,” I shouted at the screen. “You have to come in. You haven’t been with the Department long enough to have accumulated this much vacation time or sick time.”

Jane cocked her head at me, some of the humanity returning to her face. “No?”

“No,” I said. “And… think of all the paperwork I’ll have to fill out explaining this. The pile will be taller than I am.”

Jane’s face floated in front of mine, the pixels of her eyes dancing as she looked into mine. She gave a weak smile.

“You don’t want that,” I said, “do you?”

Jane flickered on-screen. “No, I suppose not.”

I pressed my hands hard against the glass of the giant monitor. “Then come to me, Jane. Come to me.”

I looked to my hands and her eyes followed. Her fingers traced mine and I pushed my power into the screen, trying to make any kind of connection that I could. Old images of building surveillance started filling my mind and I felt the electricity of the building mixing with my power, coursing through me.

And then it was joined by another sensation. A wave of an energy I couldn’t comprehend washed through me and I felt something familiar in it, something… caring. Jane. I pushed myself toward it, and then felt it touch me. I shook myself free of my psychometric vision.

I was still standing at the screen, but when I looked down, Jane’s flesh-and-blood hands were sticking through the screen, holding both of mine. Our fingers were intertwined, little shocks of electricity jolting up my arm. I eased her arms forward, extracting her out through the monitor inch by inch. It was like pulling her out of a pool of molasses. Her big blue eyes widened as her face approached the surface of the monitor, and then her whole head pushed through. As it broke the surface, she gasped in air.

“That’s it,” I said. “That’s it.”

Jane shrieked in pain, startling me. I stopped pulling. “What’s wrong?” I said, as if pulling my girlfriend out of a big-screen television wasn’t wrong enough. Then I realized what it was as I felt something tug her back to the other side. The building was trying to keep her.

“Fight it, Jane,” I said, holding on to her. “I’m not letting go. You have to fight it.”

“It hurts,” she cried out, her body convulsing in my arms. I let go of her hands and hugged her to me. It was no use. The pull from within the monitor was too strong and Jane’s body was slowly drawing back into it.

Still hugging her, I let one of my hands free and reached out to the monitor. I pushed my psychometric power back into it, desperate to try anything to keep Jane. Usually when I read an object, using that power drained me, but this was no regular object. This was a sentient one. Maybe I could actually drain it instead. Using another part of my mind’s eye, as I had when reading Perry the vampire to create a mental shield, I pictured my own energy as a battery charge meter, like the one on my phone. It was at the halfway mark. I concentrated on the meter, willing it to recharge, feeling the building’s power give a bit. I kept watching the meter, ignoring Jane’s screams out in the real world as I forced the meter to fill. First one bar filled on it, then another. I pushed myself harder, until the reading showed a full charge, and then pulled myself out of the vision. Hopefully it was enough to have drained the power I was fighting against.

Jane still struggled against the monitor, but she was making progress freeing herself. Now she was caught in the monitor only waist high, trying to pull herself out of it like someone who had fallen in a hole while ice fishing. All around us the rest of the room was in turmoil. Emergency lights were flashing; alarms were going off; monitor stations were smoking as circuits blew and the acrid smell of burning electronics filled the room. I grabbed Jane, put one of my feet up on the monitor’s edge, and pulled her toward me. She stuck for a moment, but then the two of us were falling as she slid out of the monitor with one last rush of electronic buzzing. I landed hard on my back, the crunch of broken DVDs sounding out from underneath me. Jane landed on top of me.

She looked stunned for a moment, and then smiled.

“Hello, Tall, Dark, and Human,” she said. I couldn’t help but smile back before I pulled her closer and kissed her.

I would have stayed in her warm embrace forever if the sound of crunching footsteps hadn’t drawn me back to reality. The two of us sat up and I got my first good look at her, my mouth agape.

“What are you staring at?” she asked, worried.

“You,” I said, struggling out of my coat. “You’re naked.” Jane looked down at herself as if noticing for the first time. Her face went red, even if her body didn’t. I handed her my coat and she slid it on within seconds. I reached into its pocket and pulled out the necklace, fastening it around her neck again.

“I believe this is yours,” I said.

Jane ran her hand over it, tracing the silver FOREVER banner along the front of the heart. “Thanks,” she said, standing up.

I stood as well and turned to Nicholas, who was just joining us. He had reverted to his regular human form, but nothing could hide the fact that he was covered in bits of food and flecks of broken discs. Behind him, nothing remained where the disc-throwing machine had once stood.

“Everyone okay?” he said, brushing at the shiny metal flakes that coated him.

“You look like a disco ball,” I said. Jane giggled, causing Nicholas to stop brushing at himself and look up at her.

“Nicholas Vanbrugh,” I said, “this is my girlfriend, Jane Clayton-Forrester, your ghost in the machine.”

Nicholas held his hand out, upturned in a formal gesture. Jane clutched my coat closed around her with one hand and gave him her other. Nicholas gave a low bow, and then kissed it. “Enchanted.”

“As am I,” she said. She withdrew her hand and started buttoning the coat. “Forgive me. I’m usually not so naked.”

Nicholas turned away in modesty. He looked at me. “Sorry I acted like that in the break room.”

“Hey, no apologies,” I said. “Your Hulking out seemed to have had a positive effect on getting out of this situation.”

Nicholas looked hesitant. “Still… I prefer to not show that side of myself, but when that salad hit me, something inside me snapped. I’m wearing Armani, after all.”

“A little vanity can go a long way,” I said, and he smiled.

“That it can.”

“Hey, riddle me this,” I said. “Why would vampires need a soda machine or a vending one?”

Nicholas looked mock offended. “What? We can’t drink or eat for flavor?”

“Sorry,” I said. “I guess we’ve spent so much time in the Department figuring out how to fight you guys. Not really up on your culinary habits-other than the blood drinking.”

Nicholas nodded. “Besides, not everyone who works here is of the fanged persuasion.”

“Ah,” I said. I turned to Jane. Her brow was furrowed with concern. “Jane…?”

She held up her finger to shush me and I fell silent. “Do you hear that?” she asked.

I listened for a few seconds and shook my head. “No, I don’t. Sorry.”

“Exactly,” she said. “It’s far too quiet. Mr. Vanbrugh, is the building all right?”

Nicholas listened for a minute, and then headed for one of the few still-operational consoles in the room.

“No, it’s not,” he said, after a moment at the keyboard. “A lot of the systems are down, including the security systems.”

He keystroked in a few commands, then entered them again and again before the security doors to the room finally opened. A stream of workers poured in, all of them looking around at the chaos with amazement. A few of them, I noticed, weren’t shy about getting a look at Jane wearing nothing more than my coat.

We left Nicholas and his men to assess the damage to the Gibson-Case Center. I put my arm around Jane’s waist and headed us toward the door, carefully helping her step over all the shards of broken discs covering the floor. One crisis down, seventy-three to go. I didn’t know what I was going to do next on that list, other than find some clothes for my recently returned girlfriend. Something more substantial than just a necklace, anyway.

On our way from the control room down to the castle, we had to go through part of the shopping district of the Gibson-Case Center, but no one dared stop us. They all just stared. When Jane and I entered the forest and she saw the castle for the first time, Jane looked like she was dazed. When we finally went into the castle and came to Brandon’s chamber door, the blond vampire from his council, Gerard, let us in. Council seemed to be in session, and with them were Aidan, Beatriz, and Connor. When Connor turned and saw it was us, his face lit up.

“Jane!” Connor said. His face broke into a wide smile and he ran across the room to hug her. He wrapped his arms around her and squeezed her tight. Jane just stood there, looking stunned.

“Oh,” she said, a pained look on her face. “Hello.”

Connor stepped back from her, put his arms on her shoulders, and looked her in the eyes. “You do remember me, right?” He looked to me. “She does remember me, right, kid?”

I took her back from him and put a comforting arm around her. “She’s a little shaken, I think. From the whole Gibson-Case-Center-eating-her business. That’ll do it to a lady.”

“Gotcha,” Connor said. He stepped away from her, giving her a little distance. It seemed to relax Jane a little. I turned her to Brandon.

“This is Brandon, the man we have to thank for getting someone to help rescue you. If he hadn’t set his best man to the task, I don’t know where you’d be right now.”

Brandon looked at Jane, who was simply staring at him with a big blank smile on her face.

He nodded to her politely. “Nice to finally meet you in person. I’ve heard much about you.”

“You have?” Jane said, sounding a little too bubbly for talking to the lord of the vampires.

“Jesus,” I heard Aidan whisper to his Connor. “Are you going to have to buy safety scissors with her around?”

I shot him a dirty look to let him know I had heard him. He looked at me and bulged his eyes. What? they said.

“She’s just disoriented,” I said. “It’ll pass. I think.”

Brandon turned to Gerard. “Find her some clothes, if you would.” Gerard nodded and blurred off toward the door.

“I was just discussing with the council what our options were for a course of action…”

“And?”

Brandon sighed. “We hadn’t even figured out when to best discuss it,” he said.

Connor laughed. “So you’re effectively having a meeting to discuss when you’re having a meeting.”

I looked over at my partner. “It would appear our people have more in common with the vampires than we thought. That’s promising.”

Brandon looked at me, his brow nice and furrowed with frustration. “Do you have anything better in mind?”

“Actually,” I said, “I do. Your saboteur has toyed around enough with trying to keep your prophecy from coming true. Without knowing who exactly to get rid of, they tried to stop us all-first Connor, then Jane and myself. I can only speak for myself, but I’m sick of being a target. The sooner we get our sides talking, the less chance our saboteur has of succeeding. I’m taking Aidan with us. I have some business the four of us need to attend to.”

The council erupted in an uproar of protest, but Brandon shut them down with a look. “Agreed,” he said, gesturing toward me and Jane, “but first, pants.”

I smiled, feeling a little optimistic for once. My girl was at my side, albeit pantless, and I had a plan that felt like it stood a chance of actually working.