by Anton Strout
I did my best to look gob-smacked.
“You are!” he said, raising his voice.
“Gentlemen,” Allorah said. She put on her stern Enchancellor voice. “I think it’s best to keep the peace between Other Division and Arcana by playing liaison in getting to the bottom of this.” She sighed. “I hope that I don’t have to waste my time running fools’ errands to maintain Departmental harmony. Mr. Canderous, make sure you file her personal-days request with the proper departments as soon as possible.”
“Will do,” I said, waiting to be dismissed. “Thanks.”
“And see to those files I pulled for you immediately.” Wesker’s wicked smile burned into me. He took a perverse pleasure in my suffering. Some people, even the supposed good guys, were just wired that way. We all stood there in silence for a moment as the rest of the archivists’ world continued working all around us.
“Well?” Allorah said finally, waving me away toward the stairs.
“Of course,” I said and headed off to the surface world again. It was a hotly contested question today as to who was causing me more suffering at the moment—the actual threat of vampires or the threat of what might happen trying to save Jane, Connor, and his brother. One thing was for sure—there was no way I was asking the Department for help, not with Ms. Pokey McStabberson on staff.
I managed to make it out of the Department and the Lovecraft Café without running into the Inspectre. I felt a little ashamed avoiding him, but not enough to actually seek him out. Happy to be out of the Department, I walked down through the Village heading for home and dreading looking through all the files Allorah had given me. Around West Third, my phone went off in my pocket with a short burst.
An incoming text. I flipped it open.
HEY HON, from an unknown number
JANE? I typed back.
WHO ELSE SILLY?
WE FOUND CONNORS BROTHER. HIS FRIENDS ARE WORKING ON GETTING YOU BACK.
IVE SEEN HIM.
THE BROTHER?
YES. THIS BUILDIN IS COMPLEX BUT I CAN TIE IN TO SOME OF ITS VIDEO SYSTEMS.
REALLY?
YES. IVE SEEN YOU TOO. I MISS YOU.
I MISS YOU TOO. WE WILL GET YOU OUT OF THIS.
HURRY. SO TIRED.
TIRED?
HIDING FROM THE SYSTEM IN HERE. IT SEEMS . . . ALIVE. I THINK IT KNOWS IM HERE. SOMEONE PLANNED THIS. Then, a final TIRED and nothing after that.
I stared at my phone for several minutes, hoping for something more, but found only disappointment.
I couldn’t take it anymore. I closed my phone, overwhelmed by a strong and sudden depression, and hurried home.
I keyed into my apartment and went down the hall to my bedroom. I threw down my shoulder bag and pulled out the red resin heart I had bought Jane right before she had been sucked into the machine world. I sat down and put my other hand to Jane’s pillow. I pushed my psychometry into it, my power crackling to life and pulling me back to the past. I guided myself back in time. A vision of Jane that was as clear as any HDTV picture resolved in my head, the sounds and sensations of her voice talking to me the night before.
I took my time, lingering in the moment, not wanting to leave such a vivid and clear vision of my beloved. She seemed so real to me, but no matter how much I wanted to stay in that moment, my psychometric power was taking its toll and I was forced to pull out of the vision only when I felt the dangerously low pull of my blood sugar calling. I fell back weak on the bed, the sting of tears filling the corners of my eyes. There had to be something more I could be doing about helping her.
I lifted myself from the bed, barely able to gather the strength to stand. I worked my way down the hall and keyed myself into the one locked room in the apartment. The White Room—my neutral sanctuary away from every possible psychometric episode. I left the door open, the hallway light spilling into the room doing a more than fair job of lighting up the whiteness of the walls. I threw myself down into the white chair in the center of the room and helped myself to the only small splash of color in there—a roll of Life Savers. With a heavy heart and a bit of hypoglycemia, I peeled off the candies one by one and swallowed them whole. In minutes, I felt my low sugar correct itself, but right now there was nothing that could correct the pain I felt until Jane was free of whatever the true heart of the Gibson-Case Center was.
That would have to wait until the vampire Nicholas got back to me. Until then, my body craved sleep and I gave in, drifting away with visions of vampires dancing in my head.
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.
18
Nicholas led me in silence to Aidan’s quarters in the castle and left me outside his door. He refused to enter, but left with a promise to keep working on the whereabouts of Jane.
I knocked on Aidan’s chamber door and it opened. Aidan was standing there, his eyes hidden deep within the skull-and-bones hoodie he was wearing. He looked bored, but turned and led me into his private rooms without a word. The woman he had thrown across the forest floor, Beatriz, was also there, lounging back on an antique sofa. Connor was sitting across from her on a velvety red throne.
“Your pet’s here,” Aidan said, crossing the room. Connor looked up. He was a little more composed-looking than I’d seen him in the past few days.
“Any news on Jane yet, kid?” he asked.
I shook my head as I crossed the room and threw my exhausted self down into one of the many puffy chairs arranged around the main space. “Nothing yet. Nicholas said it might take a while to go through all the high tech of the building to see what’s going on, but . . .”
“Nicholas?” Aidan said, sitting down on the couch next to Beatriz and rolling his eyes. “Ugh.”