“No!” The vampiric general spat. He was seven feet tall, weighed four hundred pounds, and wore no armor. His dark, maroon hair flowed in the icy wind and he bared his fangs as he smirked viciously. “In the next five minutes, fresh soldiers will arrive and you’ll be dead.”
“I doubt it. My fighters have probably already killed them en route.”
As he said this he looked up to see twenty fighters circling in the sky. “So I suggest you surrender and tell all ground and air fighters to stop. Tell them you’ve won.”
“No. I will not bow down to such scum!”
John’s voice came through the communicators, sending out a message to Romsky and his men. “Copy that,” Romsky whispered and then said to the vampire, “I guess you’ll have it your way then,” he turned around and went to the back of the army, “Kill them,” he said softly to his units through the communicator, “leave none alive.”
“Ranjit,” John said, “What’s the situation?” His voice was coarse from screaming. Ranjit could hear massive thuds and whipping sounds.
“We’re reaching the database. We’ve got one hostage and he’s going to take us in. When the files have been transferred and we’re out of there, I’ll let you know.”
“Alright, over and out.” The frequency switched off.
“Now,” Ranjit said, “wear these.” He handed the vampire two ear-pieces.
“What’s this?”
“Just wear them; they will block out the sound.”
The vampire laughed in disbelief.
“Wear them, damn it! They have been specially modified to block out the frequency but still allow you to hear us. Now just wear them!”
The vampire did as he was told and Evan flipped the switch. “That should stop any distraction,” he said.
They walked into a vast hall with shelves crammed to the ceiling with dusty old tomes. There were honeycomb shaped compartments stuffed with codices and scrolls older than any civilization on the Earth. The General and his men felt disheartened to know they would be destroying such a precious place. But they also knew they would be preserving all the important information digitally.
At the end of the hall was a metal door that required a coded entry with vampiric blood and a retinal scan. No ordinary vampire was allowed entry, unless he had prior permission. In this case, there was no one to give that permission and so the abandoned area was free to them. “Here,” the vampire said.
“Give the passwords and whatever’s necessary.”
“Nothing is required.”
“You take me to be a fool?” Ranjit said harshly, slapping him across the face. “Now do as I say and open the damn door!” The vampire said nothing and did nothing. “I said OPEN IT!”
He shook his head and spat at him. “No. What will you do?”
“You think we’re not prepared?” said Ranjit. He nodded to Evan who deactivated the earpieces. The vampire immediately covered his ears and his face creased and twisted. His mouth opened but nothing came out. The pain in his ears was so horrible that he couldn’t even scream. He grabbed Ranjit’s shoulder, then fell down and thrashed and rolled around on the floor. “That’s enough.” Ranjit said.
As soon as Evan reactivated the earpieces, the vampire’s facial contortions stopped. He gasped as the pain left.
“So,” Ranjit went on, “Are you helping or not?”
His blood red eyes looked at the General fiercely, and he nodded rapidly. “Yes, yes,” he said in a choked voice. He got to his feet and went to the door where he pricked his finger on an electronic pin. The first metal door opened. Then came the retina check. It took a few seconds. Then, a digital voice said, “Access Granted.”
The door slid up and they went inside. In the center of the relatively small white room, a large two ton computer that stored all the information stood. They saw that this computer connected to a network of smaller mini-computers. Evan went to work quickly. He sat down at the table and a touch-sensitive holoscreen appeared. These computers were in fact holodrives, or rather fiber optic holographic drives. Evan knew they were much faster and capable of storing hundreds of exabytes of information per second. They contained all the information in the library. The screen turned on and it asked for a password. “What is it?” he asked the vampire. “What’s the password?”
“I don’t know,” the vampire said. “Honestly.”
Singh asked, “Who does?”
“The one who has access to the computer is the master of the library. His name is Serayk.” The vampire said, staring at Evan who continued to search the drives of the computer.
“And where is this Serayk?” Ranjit asked.
The vampire shook his head, “I don’t know. He might have escaped.”
“Liar!”
“I’m telling you the truth.” The vampire said. “I have no idea what the password is.”
“Not to worry. We can hack into it,” Evan said, already trying his luck. “There must be a way.”
“Who is Serayk? Where is he?” Ranjit said, his dark eyes glinting and piercing the vampire’s.
“He...”
“Tell me!” Ranjit said.
“He is at the Council.”
“What?” Ranjit asked. “What Council?”
“The Council of Elders. We were warned by them about this and we took precautions. So he was commanded to be with them.”
“And where are they now?”
“No one but Regent Erik and President Daniel know at any time where the Council is. They keep moving from place to place, sometimes leaving their subjects uninformed, so that no one will keep a watch.”
“Did he tell you where he was going?”
“He was forbidden to tell us.”
“Oh, so he tells you he’s going to meet the Council but you don’t know where.”
“Yes. It’s the truth!”
Ranjit shrugged and sighed heavily. “What can we do?”
The beast spread its tentacles and John could make out its circular jaws and spiral teeth. From its mouth the squid spewed out dark acidic ink. It burned through the ground and gave off a foul odor. “Bill,” John said, constantly dodging the tentacles and acid, “Where are you?”
A plasma beam hit the beast in the back of its head. John saw Bill’s fighter pass by him.
“I’m right here!” Bill shouted and a large group of fighters followed him. He laughed and said, “Go and get your men. We’ll take care of this.”
John ran into the base and Bill and his squadron kept shooting at the monster that growled in pain and spat acid towards some ships. Bill flew into the mouth of the beast, launched a timed missile and sped back out. His squadron covered him constantly firing rounds of plasma beams that burned through the pinkish gray tentacles. The squid fell back and exploded from within the ocean waves, dirtying the landing pad of CCC1 with black ink, rubbery flesh, and blood.
In the elevator, John got a message from Ranjit, “John, we got a problem.”
“What’s the matter?”
“This computer’s got a password and obviously only one of them knows it. The vamp with me tells me that the guy isn’t around. What do I do?”
“Isn’t there anyway to crack it?”
“Evan’s trying some passwords and he has another three tries before it goes into total lockdown.”
Just like the Inner Chamber,
John thought; “Okay. What’s he tried so far?”
“Let’s see...Anaxagoras, Anu-Sa-Rimh, Gareng, even Aidan. But none of them have worked.”
“Are there any inscriptions anywhere?”
“Well...” Ranjit looked around and saw that there were hundreds of tiny, almost unnoticeable inscriptions on the table. “Yeah, I can see them. There are so many!”
The elevator opened and John stayed inside, waiting. “Okay. What language?”
“Uh, well...there’s Arabic or Urdu, I’m not sure. There’s Hebrew, oh wait! There’s Gurmukhi.”
“So you can read it?” John asked, hearing shouts coming from the hall across from the elevator.
“Yeah, it says...it spells out Abiskoji-Astur. What the hell does that mean?”
“No idea. It must be some Migritic term.”
“Yeah, I guess. So, is that the password?”
“Yeah. You see, they usually have reminders or hints for passwords, for those who know where to look. They are easily traceable only by vampires.”
“Well, I’m not one,” Ranjit said defensively.
“No, I didn’t mean that. Sometimes those who need to find them do; it’s some incantation which allows only the user to find it quickly; otherwise you have to scrutinize, because the inscriptions are either too small or intricately joined together.”
“Yeah, you’re right. The Aramaic and Sanskrit are joined together.”
“There...you see. Well, try it.” There was a pause and then:
“Yeah! It’s worked.”
“Good. Now comes the final phase. Over and out,” John quickly shut off the frequency of his earpiece and ran towards the ongoing battle outside the elevator.
He saw Daniel drenched in blood. He was reaching for his father and saying, “What would you have me do?” Erik’s body had been smashed into the steel wall. Dante and Liam remained and were watching this exchange between father and son.
“What the hell’s going on here?”
“I need blood,” Daniel said to his father weakly.
“Nikolas, what’s going on?”
Nick looked at John and closed his eyes, “John, what if I was to tell you Daniel wants to join us?”
“Can you trust him?” John asked.
“He’s my son,” Nikolas said simply.
“I still don’t trust him,” Dante said.
“Please, Father,” Daniel said. His bloody tears streamed down his cheeks. “You know I will be executed for this. I have no other choice but to join you.”
“And how can we trust you? You betrayed your own father in the first Rebellion,” John said.
“So has my father; he’s played the double-agent for a long time. What about that?”
“I trust Nikolas with my life.”
Daniel’s face fell. He went down on his knees and cried out loud. Nikolas couldn’t handle it. He spoke to John in his mind. “He’s my son.”
“I know that,” John responded with his mind.
“Let’s give him a chance. I think we can trust him.”
“And if the Regnumites don’t?”
“We will see to that.”
“Alright,” John sighed aloud. “You have your chance,” he said to Daniel. “Don’t blow it.”
Daniel stood up slowly. A shy smile appeared on his face, and he bowed his head. “Thank you.”
“Come on. We haven’t much time,” John said. “The reinforcements will be coming soon and they’re going to blow this place up.”
“Okay, I’ve started the transfer process. All we do now is wait.” Evan said, his fingers typing rapidly on the screen.
“Will we have enough discs?”
“Yeah,” Evan said to Ranjit, turning to face the vampire. “What’s the size of each hard drive?”
The vampire slouched on the floor, a broken man. “Each holodrive is about four hundred yottabytes.”
Evan got up and looked at the mini-computers, which were connected to the main CPU of the monitor. He inspected them closely.
“What are you doing?” Ranjit said.
“Just trying to find a latch...ah!” He unlocked it and slid the cover up. The box contained one hundred mini-drives, each one four hundred yottabytes. Evan counted. There were, two hundred and fifty such boxes totaling ten million yottabytes worth of information!
He inspected the number of discs he had. There were not enough. He shook his head in disappointment. “I don’t think so.”
“What?” Ranjit said, surprised. “Well, how much will be required?”
“We have two hundred discs. That means we have twenty thousand yottabytes. That’s not enough.”
“Then,” Ranjit sighed, “there’s only one thing we can do.”
Daniel ran along with the others but collapsed as soon as they got outside. There were hundreds of fighters flying around, shooting at vampire fighters and firing missiles at the base. The base imploded and shook the ground.
“John, wait!” Nikolas shouted after his friends who were about to get into one of the tankers.
John turned around to see Nikolas with Daniel in his arms.
“He needs blood.”
“Well, then give it to him inside!” John said.
All around them, fighters shooting lasers scurried about like deadly locusts. Some collided with each other and others crashed into the base. Kurt and his men were like a pack of wolves, ferocious, eager to kill, but wild and savagely undisciplined.
A tanker landed near the base and four soldiers helped John and the rest inside. Daniel hyperventilated. “Will he make it?” John asked, surprised by his own question. Daniel’s face was whiter than chalk. His eyes faded to an opaque milky color.
Nikolas took his sword, made a small incision on his wrist, and squeezed his arm to make the blood flow. He put his wrist to Daniel’s mouth. “Yes,” Nikolas said silently, as the others looked on. “Feed as much as you want and regain your strength, my son. You will need it.” Daniel slurped the blood hungrily and veins bulged out on his face. His fangs protracted out of his gums as he greedily bit into the wrist and sucked as much of the life-fluid as he could. His face regained a pinkish hue and his eyes turned a dark, golden color. He pulled away and let out a majestic roar. Nikolas sat down on the ground. Most of his color faded from his face and his lips turned ashen gray and dried. He moaned silently.
Daniel said, “Father, I’ll give you some back.” He bit into his forearm and squeezed it until twelve drops entered his father’s mouth. The humans on the tanker, although fascinated, were forced to look away in disgust. John was used to it and said nothing. He stood up and gestured the other Rebels to come and see him, away from the others.
When they were alone and out of earshot John said, “How can we trust Daniel?”
Liam said, “If we cannot, then we must trust Nikolas. He should be Nikolas’s responsibility.”
“But if Daniel does anything wrong, people will blame Nick and they may banish him,” Dante said.
“They can’t do that,” John said, his eyes constantly on the Gareng kid. “Nick’s the founder of this whole thing.” He shook his head. “We will have to experiment and wait it out.” He sighed.
“At what cost,” Dante said. “We can’t afford to use anyone as bait!”
“No one needs to know about it,” John said. “Don’t worry; I’ll deal with it. Besides, with him on our side, we’re sure to learn some secrets.”