“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.