The basement control room of the Council house buzzed with activity as Dee entered with Madeleine following close behind. The room was filled with long white desks lined from end to end with computers. In the very center of the room there was a raised console with a computer atop it.
Almost every one of the work stations had a Vampire at it, working and typing trying to stave off the problem. At the bottom of the narrow staircase a woman in a black turtle neck sweater and jeans stood. Her rich mahogany skin was flawless, without blemish or scar or anything else.
She glared up at them with her dark brown eyes, her full lips flatten in expression before she spoke, “I had heard you were here,” she spoke. Her hair was dark like oil and when she began to movie it swished perfectly back into place after each step.
“Gwen,” Dee smiled, “It’s nice to see you again.”
“We met once before, briefly at that,” she started, “Now Daunte tells me you mentioned me—I don’t like having my name tossed about.” Gwen’s voice had no accent, there were no distinguishing fluctuations in her voice.
“We came to ask for the assistance of someone you have in your service,” Madeleine said, “Please excuse our rudeness.”
Gwen walked closer to them, her hands down at her sides, “The Russian Council house is crippled and you come to ask for our help?”
“We don’t need anyone—except Amandah,” Dee said.
“That’s not going to happen,” Gwen said, “Amandah is one of the best programmers we know—she’s the only thing keeping this virus at bay.”
Dee shook her head, “It’s not a virus,” she started, “It’s a demon.”
Gwen folded her arms, “It does bare a striking resemblance to that, but in all my years I wouldn’t know how one would go about exorcising a mechanical demon.”
All her years, Gwen was by any means old. She was older than just old, she was ancient. She weighed in now at over a thousand years old. She’d been born in a Native American Village and had actually lived to see the birth and growth of America.
Madeleine sighed, “He’s not mechanical, he has form, he can just jump inside of computers and machines.”
The Vampires worked at their computers shouting things over one another, from the sounds of the comments none of them had made any headway with the problem. There was an aura of panic filling the room.
Madeleine looked to Gwen, “Have you ever heard of Alexander?”
“There are lots of Alexanders,” she said.
“Alexander is the name of the super computer in Heaven,” Dee piped up now, “Its actually a computer with a soul—made to hold records more than anything.”
“How does that help us right now?” asked Gwen. Madeleine could tell by the tone used that Gwen had become angry.
“The latest attack that was mounted on Heaven was by something similar to what we have here,” Dee said.
Gwen stood overlooking the room full of Vampires, “How can you be so sure we’re dealing with that same entity?”
Madeleine nodded, “Allow me,” she pulled out a small bottle with a corked top and walked down to one of the computer consoles. She dumped the liquid onto the console and immediately it began to sizzle and pop. Madeleine turned back, “Holy water, I’ve never seen a reaction quite like this.”
Now Gwen’s face reddened, her eyes were wide with anger.
Dee muttered to her, “Um, Madeleine—any kind of water is going to spark like that when you pour it into a computer.”
In a flurry of speed Madeleine rushed back to the computer, flailing her arms in a frantic jazz-hands motion, “Shit,” she hissed, “I’m so sorry.”
Gwen barred her teeth, her fangs were fully visible now, “What is it that the two of you need?”
“Amandah has information that we need and to get her we’re willing to help you with your plight,” Dee said.
“How do you plan to do that?” asked Gwen.
“We need to find a way to apply the normal rules of an exorcism to a computer and forcibly insert them computer,” Dee said.
Madeleine suddenly cut in, “We could have Amandah write a script, something simple that would in effect digitize the rite of exorcism!”
Dee shook her head, “Wouldn’t work,” she paused, “There needs to be more than just words for it to work—there has to be belief.”
“What if we recited part of the ritual ourselves while finding something else we can use that would represent parts of the rite?” Madeleine said.
Gwen thought for a moment, “You said holy water already—well the system is liquid cooled.”
“We could bless the cooling liquid and then press a cross against the some part of the computer while reading the rite,” said Dee.
Madeleine glanced around, “Where is Amandah?”
Gwen jogged a little ways across the floor to where there was a large wall panel pulled off, it had been hard to see from where they entered but the opening was almost covered by lengths of fiber optics and cables. The space was dimly lit.
“The cooling system and the server trays are back there,” Gwen said. Dee started to crawl down into the panel. Gwen grabbed Dee by the shoulder quickly, “Be careful in there, we’ve got petabyte of date stored on those things.”
“When have we ever not been careful?” Dee asked.
“Your idiot friend just poured holy water into one of my computers…” Gwen said.
“Good point,” Dee said, “We’ll be careful this time.”
Dee crawled off into the wall and then Madeleine started behind her pausing to speak again, “I’m sorry again, about the computer.” She paused for an awkward amount of time, “I can pay for it if…”
“Go,” Gwen said.
“I think I will.”
They fought through a virtual wall of wires to get inside. There was only just enough room for them to stand and the ceiling was lightly touching the top of Madeleine’s head when they did that. All around the room’s perimeter wires hung from the walls.
At the end of the room a girl with dark hair laid on her back underneath a control panel with a flashlight in her mouth and digging back into the folds of some wires to get to something. Her face was only visible in her flashlights glow as it bounced off the panel and back into her face. Dee moved forward carefully as to not catch on anything or snag any wires. She stopped a few feet back from the woman, “Amandah,” she spoke softly.
“Can’t you see I’m busy, idiot!” came the muffled reply.
“Looks like you’re making a futile effort there,” said Madeleine.
“No doubt you know what’s going on,” Amandah said, “Well I’m going to attempt to at least save these uncorrupted server trays by pulling them out, my firewall is keeping the thing from getting this far.”
Dee shook her head, “Your firewall is going to fail.”
“Inevitably,” Amandah said, “But it will help me preserve these mounds of data here and have a point from which to work on flushing that thing out of the system.”
“You keep calling it a ‘thing’,” Madeleine said, “What do you think it is?”
“It’s not behaving like a virus—if I had to give it a name I would give it a name I would say its more akin to cancer,” Amandah explained. “It wasn’t introduced from outside of the system—a chunk of the Operating System just mutated and began to corrupt other things.”
“That’s our boy,” Madeleine said.
“But we heard that the source was demonic in origin,” Dee said.
“That was speculation on my part—its not every day that when the system is taken over you get shots people covered in black oil burning in a lake of fire…” Amandah said.
Madeleine folded her arms, “Well it looks like you might be in luck.”
“Why do you say that?” asked Amandah.
“Because we know nothing about computers, but we’ve vanquished a few demons in our day,” Dee said.
Amandah drug herself out from under the panel, “Got a plan?”
“Show me to the cooling tanks,” Madeleine asked.
Amandah jumped to her feet and moved to a small black cylinder again the wall, “This is it, do you need it opened?”
“Yes, please,” Madeleine said.
She pulled hard to turn the valve on the front of the tank, “You can close the system off from the tank here to open it, but it can’t run long with out being circulated or it will overheat.” With the container cut off they lifted the locks around the lid and consequently were able to lift the lid out.
With a small plastic rosary in hand Madeleine crossed herself. Carefully she dipped the rosary down into the coolant “Bless this…coolant stuff, in Jesus name we pray, in nomeni Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti, Amen.”
The coolant began to bubble, “Seal it up, Maddie!” Dee shouted.
Amandah and Madeleine fought to get the lid down and locked. The second the last seal was in place Madeleine started to turn the valve back the way it had been. As the coolant flooded back into the system there was a loud rumble followed by sparks from the various control panels and other parts of the computers.
“What the Hell is happening?” asked Amandah.
“Its reacting violently, the way a subject of exorcism does when the demon is extracted,” Dee yelled over the screeching whirl of something in one of the panels. “Say the lines Maddie!”
“I forgot them!” Madeleine screamed back.
Dee shook her head, “Son of a bitch—“ she moved to the center of the room and slipped her jacket off and exposing her bare back and wing tattoo on with small writing below it done neatly, “It’s right here!”
Madeleine ran over scanning the text, “Depart, then, transgressor. Depart, seducer, full of lies and cunning, foe of virtue, persecutor of the innocent. I cast you forth into the outer darkness, where everlasting ruin awaits you and your abettors…” the entire work station ground to a halt the lights were shut off and in a blink everything seemed to kick back on.
“Looks like it worked,” Amandah said.
“How can you tell?” asked Dee.
“We couldn’t get it to shut down before, or even control anything with it,” she explained.
“But this isn’t the whole rite,” Madeleine said, “Why did it work?”
“I paraphrased it,” Dee smiled back at her as she pulled her coat back up, “We’re Angels, we don’t need all of the clutter like Humans.”
Amanda exhaled loudly and dropped her head back as she leaned against the wall, “Well Lucy and Ethel, looks like you two pulled this one out of your ass to save the day…” Outside in the control room people clapping could be heard.
Madeleine nodded, “Maybe for this part, but we’re going to need to ask you about something that happened a long time ago.”
Amandah smiled, “I’m in trouble?”
Dee folded her arms, “Not in the least—we’ve just got questions only you seem to know the answers to.”
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