“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?”