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.”

“John,” Ranjit’s voice came through his earpiece, “We’re finished.”

“Really? That’s great! So you managed to do it without much trouble.”

“Well, the trouble is we haven’t enough discs, so...”

“So?”

“So, we decided to shift the hard drives to the tankers.”

John laughed. “Good Ranjit. You always have a trick or two up your sleeve!”

The tankers arrived at the Vatican Library and bulldozers were sent through so that the transportation process would be streamlined. All this while, as the loading and unloading continued, the button Evan had pressed was still on. The loading crew laughed when they saw the vampires suffering on their behalf. Ranjit felt a little remorse for what he had done and what he was doing. He asked himself if it was all worth it. Were they any better than their enemies? “I’m going outside,” he murmured to Evan. He didn’t wait for any response, but strolled into the forest, far from anyone or anything. He wanted to be alone, to think things through.