The idea of being turned filled me with a mix of dread and wonder, causing me to lapse back into silence. Nicholas went back to surveying his computer screen as image after image blipped by. I needed to get the focus back on Jane.

“Not to sound harsh,” I said, “but even with all this technology at your disposal, you can’t find one blond girl gumming up your works?”

Nicholas’s fingers flew with inhuman speed over the keyboard in front of him. “If we can isolate her in the system, I am hoping to download her into a smaller subsystem or perhaps some form of peripheral device.”

“That’s great,” I said, agitated, “but I can’t have a relationship with a programmable toaster… at least not without some serious burns. I just want my Jane back.”

“You mortals… so impatient,” Nicholas said. “Finding her lost among my masterwork, pulling her out of my systems, isn’t an easy task. Especially when I think someone is sabotaging my efforts to find her. Normally I would have thought I’d have located her by now.”

“Forgive my impatience,” I said, “but I think we mortals get that way probably because we don’t live forever. We die. It’s easy to get impatient when your days are numbered.”

Nicholas paused to consider this. “Perhaps you have a point, despite it being coated in that modern sarcasm of yours,” he said. “My apologies.”

“I really hoped we had found something on all those ferals escaping,” I said. “I figured there’d be footage of some kind on it.”

“I haven’t gone through all of it yet,” Nicholas said, “but it looks like a good amount of the footage has been compromised thanks to our mysterious saboteur.” The two of us looked at images together for a while, although truthfully they were flashing by far too quickly for me to do anything but catch one out of every twenty. “Oh,” Nicholas said, standing up. “Come with me. I forgot to show you something.”

Nicholas walked off across the control room to a smaller office set to one side full of electronic components lying everywhere along with piles of mail and boxes. He walked over to one particular box that was long and white, the kind used for delivering flowers. He put both his hands on top of it. “You have a package waiting for you.”

Nicholas stepped back from the box and I approached it. It definitely looked like a flower delivery box, all right. A red bow had even been tied around it. Not trusting anything, I moved with caution as I slipped the ribbon off the box.

“Who is it from?” I asked.

Nicholas shrugged. “There’s a card with it,” he said. “Shall I read it?”

“Please,” I said. With shaking fingers, I started to ease the top off the box.

“Very well,” Nicholas said, picking the card up. “ ‘Simon. Missing you. Saw what happened with those icky monsters. Here’s a little something for you.’ ”

The top came loose and I put it off to one side. The box was filled with red roses, long stemmed. I fished around under the paper that lined the box. My hand found what it was hoping for.

I pulled the object free and held it up, smiling.

“It’s a baseball bat,” Nicholas said.

“Affirmative,” I said and took a moment to look it over. It was fancier than the one that had been destroyed by the ferals, covered in silver plating with intricate Celtic knot-work adorning it. Its design was so sleek and customized that I could barely see the seams where I could collapse it down for storage. The grip part had a rubber pad on it that made it easier to hold as well as several buttons along it with a letter assigned to each of them. CDFJLS. “I don’t think this is National Baseball League standard issue, though.”

I looked at the letters for a moment, then, realizing what they were, held the bat away from me. I punched in Jane’s initials. JCF. The bat retracted down automatically with a tiny pneumatic whoosh. I punched them in again and the bat shot out to full extension. “Neat.”

I thought of the place we had met, the Sectarian Defense League, and punched in the letters SDL. The end of the handle flipped open, and something shot out of it and off through the door to the far end of the control room. There was a loud thock as that something lodged in the wall.

“Sorry,” I said.

“No apologies necessary,” he said with a smile. “I am unharmed.”

I ran out into the control room. A wooden stake was lodged three-quarters of the way into the far wall inches from another bank of computers. I pulled it out and reset it into the handle of the bat. I pushed in the spring mechanism and closed the tiny panel at the end of it. It clicked and locked in place. “Double neat,” I said, marveling at the new instrument of destruction in my hand. “How on earth could Jane do this?”

“Hold on,” Nicholas said, sitting down at the main console again. He punched in a few keystrokes and a list started scrolling down the screen. “This is part of our work-order system for building maintenance and such. I do see a request with our machine shop for the construction of this item from earlier this morning.”

“Wait,” I said. “This thing was created in a couple of hours? I can’t even get a bunch of pens from our supply room without twelve forms and a two-day wait!”

“I assure you,” he said, “our machine shop is quite functional. Most of the raw materials used in the Gibson-Case Center are refined here. If I do say so, my design schematics for this autonomous machine system are quite remarkable.”

“But even with the use of machines,” I said, “it would still take a craftsman days to plan this out.”

“You misunderstand me,” he said with a smile. “Our machine shop is quite literally that-a shop run by machines.”

“No humans?” I asked.

“None.”

I sighed. I was impressed. “That would explain the lack of red tape, I suppose.”

I swung the bat around in my hands, loving the balance of it.

“You might want to be careful with that around here,” he said, “considering the company.”

“Oh, right,” I said, stopping. I retracted the bat using the keypad on it and slid it into the empty holster on my belt. “Sorry. I should probably go see Brandon. I know he’s waiting to see how things went with the sample.”

“That,” Nicholas said, “and I suspect he’s still waiting to hear whether you’re going to help us with our book of prophecy or not.”

“We’ll see about that,” I said. “I’m not too keen on the whole idea of prophecies, but I think I understand a bit more of your leader now. Let me get moving.” I patted the bat at my side. “I promise I won’t stake any of you. At least not on purpose.” I started for the doors leading back to the elevators.

“Is that more of your modern sarcasm?” Nicholas said, spinning in his chair as his eyes followed me across the room toward the Star Trek doors.

“Something like it,” I said. “Yeah.”

“I like that,” he said. “You remind me of Wren.”

The warmth in his words stopped me in my tracks. I turned back to him. “Great,” I said, giving him a double thumbs-up. “I’ll be sure to let him know in the afterlife. Maybe we can get a cloud together.”

“Sarcasm again,” Nicholas said; then his eyes lit up. “Let me try one… umm, oh! Tell Aidan I said hello and that I hope he’s enjoying my beloved companion Beatriz.” Nicholas looked pleased with himself. “Did I do it right?”

I gave him a pained, halfhearted smile.

“Keep working on it,” I said. I spun around again, the doors opening for me as I walked out of them. “Sarcasm takes time to master… and if there’s one thing you vamps got, it’s time.”