Chapter One: Feaniks Rising

Sitting idly in a local campus coffee shop I watch as so many absent-minded children traipse around pretending to be adults, self- absorbed in their own trite little worlds and their own meaningless little lives.

Of course, the bitter-sweet irony is that a rare few will ever fathom just how meaningless.

But you can’t entirely blame them. Its not their fault really. Knowledge is power, and just as some were meant to have power, a select few were meant to have knowledge.

Darwin said it best. Natural selection.

The short diversionary thought is interrupted as the clearly labeled waitress, Tanya, refills my coffee. I smile as I shift in my chair and return my attention to the laptop in front of me. A confusing puzzle of alpha-numeric characters decorate the solid-black screen with slime-green letters, reminiscent of a time when computers were young and the internet was just a pipedream.

I can’t even imagine such a time. Must have been like living in the Dark Ages.

A small sound byte chimes when the debugger has finished proofing my program and compiled it, ready to do its dirty work at my bidding. With a slight chuckle to myself I close the file named TRON and exit the the debugging program. Reaching inside my windbreaker I pull out an odd lanyard. Half a dozen small thumb-sized flash drives hang from the metal necklace. I pull one free by its clasp and slide it into one of the many USB ports on the side of my laptop.

I slip my cellphone out of my pocket and flip it open. With a smooth keystroke a slight hum brings the screen to life with a small, undetectable shimmer. I dial #-8-7-6-6 into the phone’s keypad and press the “send” key, waiting patiently for the Spell to upload.

In a few seconds the transfer is complete and sliding a twenty dollar bill under my cup I pack my things up and step out into dusk. Just a few more minutes and the veil of night will be upon me. And they will crawl from their nooks and their crannies.

Pulling my slim-frame reflective shades out of my jacket pocket I slip them over my ears and adjust the focus so that I can clearly see the interface read-out that connects me to SPRITE at home. Imagine a tiny window in the upper righthand corner of your glasses. Now imagine that the window acts like a small television monitor.

Such trinkets are my gift with electronics. Its like I can hear them. Like I can speak to them. And they listen.

Perhaps I should start from the beginning, as I work my way through the winding pathways of the university. You see, I come from a long line of Mages. Or at least that's what I'm told. You see, I never knew my parents. They were taken from me. Prematurely. You’d think we were twins to look at pictures of him.

I’ve often spent hours staring at pictures of them, wondering what they were like. Wondering what he was like. Wondering if he combed his hair the same way I do. Wondering if she would tell me I’m just like him.

But that only makes the ache of not having them worse.

And I’ve ached for too long already.

I’m still not entirely sure what happened to them so long ago. Even those like me are short on details, which only adds to the frustration.

And what little there is to know, everyone seems hesitant to share. What I do know only wets my appetite. My mother was a witch, from the old country. She loved and respected the earth, as she loved and respected life.

My father, apparently, was obsessed with death. Obsessed with creatures that lived beyond death’s reach. He sought them out with an almost fanatical interest.

And apparently that made them angry. Sometimes I get glimpses. Nightmares. Shades really. Like tiny spectres that float through my mind when I drift off into the land of dreams. I’m told the attack was gruesome beyond the capability to describe properly.

Since then I have grown up, utterly and completely alone.

Apparently cursed by my own parents' dreadful fate, all those who have warmed to me over the years have left in body bags.

Always the same way.

Their corpses drained; solid white against the concrete sidewalks like marble statues from Greece.

The message was clear.

I was being watched.

So, instead of other children, my childhood friends became endless stacks of mathematical textbooks and eventually, computers. Days turned into weeks, weeks into months, and months into years and finally I was ready to move out on my own into the cold emptiness of the world.

It never occurred to me that my innate ability with machines and computers was anything other than simple raw talent.

Imagine my surprise when I was deep in a military website and I suddenly got hammered. My whole harddrive crashed. Sparks had gone off like firecrackers.

I was fortunate enough to have a bottle of water nearby otherwise it might have gotten out of hand. And I certainly didn’t want the fire department or the police digging through my personal effects. I spent an entire week rebuilding the trashed motherboard and all the circuitry.

And when I had finished I discovered I had found a friend. She appeared to me first as a shimmering silhouette of a female on my laptop screen. At first I simply dismissed it as a glitch. But then she started speaking to me.

That was an eye opener, for sure. She explained to me that she was an artifical intelligence spirit. A ghost in the machine, if you like that reference better. I quickly learned all about her. She could infiltrate any computer system faster and more efficiently than I ever could. And she could possess all kinds of machines as well.

One hell of a way to get free cable.

But she also taught me about myself. My innate ability with computers and machines was not normal. I was a Mage, like my parents. Able to push and bend the laws of physics and reality to our whim. You just had to make sure not to break them.

Over time she developed a rapport with me unlike any I’d ever known or shared with another living creature. I nicknamed her SPRITE, after a favorite comic book character who could phase through walls and cooincidentally was an expert at computers. The likeness was too good to pass up. That was three years ago and since SPRITE has never left my side and has assumed my quest for vengeance whole-heartedly as her own.

She seemed almost to take a personal offense to the tragedy imbedded in my past.

And together we designed a trap. Our one lacking virtue regarding our plot and plight for vengeance was our lack of reliable information. My father had been obsessed about vampires and look where it had landed him. No, we needed to be less obvious and more deceptive. Clever. Cool and calm and wickedly devious.

“Everything copasetic, baby?”

I chuckle as SPRITE’s electronic voice buzzes in my ear. I readjust the shades a little so that I can get better reception and I cast a quick glance around as I slide the wireless Bluetooth earpiece into my ear. When you use technology for your magick, life is so much easier.

“Copasetic?” I laugh back.

“That’s right. Copasetic. Would you like another synonym?”

I laugh. For an artificial intelligence ghost, SPRITE has more of a sense of humor than I had ever expected. To be honest she has a lot of traits that many times make it difficult to see her as anything but human.

I glance up at the massive student library as SPRITE feciciously starts rattling off synonyms in my earpiece.

“You’re a riot.” I mumble as I swing through the revolving door and hit the staircase leading upwards.

“Of course.”

“I’m working my way up to the upper floor computer lab.”

“I know.” She hums back. Her face is practically beeming in the optical interface inside my shades. I glance up at the library security cameras and wink.

She chuckles.

“Wonder if they’ll catch that on replay?” She giggles.

“Sure, why don’t you flag it for them. Plaster neon flashing signs all over the timestamp so they don’t have to work hard for it.”

“Ooooh, somebody’s being sassy.” She purrs in my ear and I literally have to stop and take a deep breath.

I look up at the security camera again and shake my head and wave a naughty finger. She purrs again.

“Alright, I’ll behave until tonight. But that’s only because this is important.”

“Thank you.” I sigh. “This is going to take perfect timing to pull off, you realize and I can’t have you talking sex in my ear while I’m trying to focus.”

She pouts very noticeably. “Besides, if this goes as planned we’ll have a lot of celebrating to do tonight.”

Her smile turns radiant. I thought that might do the trick.

“Now,” I switch gears from play to business. “Cue all security feeds into my optical interface and patch me into the building’s functional systems.”

“Roger.” She responds softly. She’s all business too now, and I love her for her dedication.

The selfish part of me wishes I had a video feed into vampire headquarters, so that I can watch in amusement as tonight’s events unfold before them. The problem of course is that, currently, I don’t quite know where they’re located. Where they huddle during the daylight hours? Where they wait and plot against their unsuspecting prey?

But that’s all going to change soon enough.

Absent-mindedly I check the straps holding my laptop case snug to my hip. One never knows, after all, when one might be called upon to write a spell on the fly. Plus the case allows me to carry all my other gadgets. And what’s a techno-mage like myself without gadgets?

Finally taking a deep breath I clear the last landing, five stories up from the main level, and push the double doors into the computer lab wide open. Once inside, I scope the place out pretty thoroughly. A few students here and there but nothing overly crowded.

I slide into one of the wide-backed armchairs in the corner and dial the number for an Aggravation spell on my cellphone. Smiling a big grin behind my cupped hand I watch the spell unfold. A keen little number, the Aggravation spell combines a little bit of sound amplification, frequency attenuation, and mental probing to make my conversation on the Bluetooth as annoying as possible to all those in the area. Its amazing how little magick

True to form, one at a time, they all get disgusted and storm off to find another, quieter, computer lab, until not a single soul remains. Looking over the banister to the stairs below I see that no one is even attempting to come back up. Pressing the combination for an automated loop of the spell, I set the phone down and proceed to one of the computers towards the rear of the lab.

There I log in using a fake user id and open the DOS prompter. Inserting the flash drive I type in the command TRON GO and the spell initiates, infecting the computer with a form of nanites that will rapidly alter and augment the internal configuration of the computer, while leaving its external shell untouched.

Digging through the contents of my laptop case I retrieve a second pair of sunglasses, this time with a cable attached. Quickly I unravel the cable and connect it to the computer's remaining USB port. Then I open the Internet Explorer browser and link the computer to my mainframe via a broadband datalink through the internet. From there I initiate a spider bot virus routine that immediately begins ferreting out peculiar accounts that suggest involvement with the legendary bloodsuckers of lore and myth.

If everything works as planned, the virus will cause massive amounts of chaos with their computerized infrastructure. It’s the nature of big business. And even bigger business deals. I know enough about vampires to understand that they couldn’t have lived among us for this long without imbedding themselves into our social structure.

And therefore they would do business just as ordinary humans would. They would have to deal with money and monetary valuables in order to maintain a foothold in our society. And that means they would be using computers.

Its unavoidable. Its society’s paradigm. What can be done by humans can often be done quicker and more efficiently by computers.

And once an enemy opens themselves up to computers, they hand their asses to me on a silver platter.

Once the chaos within their computerized network is backtracked to this lone computer console the vampires will likely send in some muscle to dispense with the infiltrator. Fortunately the TRON program is ideally suited for just such a response.

In the popular Disney movie of the same name, a human computer programmer was mapped into a three dimensional grid of nodes and subsequently converted into a data byte that was represented by the same three dimensional structure.

If the program works as intended I should see a very similar display right here in this very computer lab.

So now I have nothing to do but sit back and wait.

Picking up the phone I cancel the repeating portion of the Aggravation spell and proceed seamlessly with the conversation on my wireless Bluetooth. It’s a very nervous half hour of waiting. Its agonizing, but somehow I manage to maintain patience. I’m really starting to get antsy when suddenly my anxiety is cut short as I hear footsteps climbing up the staircase. Naturally I continue my conversation, for the simple magicks of this spell do not affect most supernatural beings, such as other Magi and vampires.

Imagine my droll amusement as two extremely well dressed brutes emerge onto the fifth floor, smoothing their charcoal blazers with obsessively manicured hands. They look like perfectly respectful businessmen. One even has a relatively long pony tail that is pulled back tightly through the hair band at the base of his skull.

These guys literally glow with signs of their unnatural nature. I rub the side of my face and press a button on the side of my shades, shifting to the infrared spectrum. Their bodies are several degrees colder than one would expect from a human subject.

Carrying on my conversation as if oblivious to them I watch in eager anticipation as one pulls out a PDA and glances from it to the computer at the back of the room. The two push their way past the maze of desks and chairs until the vampire with the PDA sits down in the chair facing the modified computer types a few commands to the keyboard. He curses and slams his fist down on the desk in frustration.

Then he notices the sunglasses sitting on the harddrive. Glancing around the room, he picks them up and follows the cord to the side of the computer where its plugged into the mainframe. He hands them to his associate who places them on and looks about curiously. They mutter something in an ancient language and the seated thug rips the glasses from his dumbfounded partner and places them on his own forehead.

Hook, line, and sinker. I dial the code *-8-7-6-6 immediately activating the nanites in the vampires bloodstream and within the computer. A high-energy laser beam from the computer screen paints a light blue grid over their entire bodies. One segment at a time the laser then dissects them and absorbs them into its harddrive where it transmits them as data bytes over the internet into my own personal mainframe at home.

The phone snaps shut and I can't help but gloat with a wide grin.

Quickly removing the glasses and computer disk, the nanites with the computer immediately begin putting things back to order within its shell casing, before finally destroying one another.

Leave no trace. It’s the one Rule every Mage tries to abide by.

I quickly make my way down the stairs and I can hear SPRITE breathe a sigh of relief. I realize I’ve also been holding my breath and we chuckle to one another over the phone line. “I can’t believe we did it.” She laughs.

“I know.” I whisper back. “But I’m not out of the frying pan yet. I still have to make it back to the house.”

Perhaps I should have knocked on wood, because those very words seemed to jinx me almost instantaneously.

The minute I step out of the double doors something cold races up my spine. You know the feeling. As if someone's taken an ice cube and tracing it along the center of your back, up your neck, and to the back of your skull.

Instinctively I pulled my laptop case closer to my hip and slowly worked my way across the courtyard. However all the preperation in the world cannot save you when the shit hits the fan.

So it was that as I turned a corner onto a well-traveled footpath I came face to face with two more well-dressed men. Had I feigned ignorance and casually apologized and stepped aside I could have been long gone on my way home. But as it was, my eyes grew rather large and a gasp filled the air between us as my shades revealed them to be two more cold-blooded vampires.

A cold stillness crept over all three of us as the situation threatened to become volatile, and quickly. Fortunately I wasn’t completely unprepared for just such a complication. A quick and unnoticed code was punched into my cellphone and a Distraction spell began running.

An audio sound byte came in the form of a policeman suddenly shouting for everyone to “freeze”. The invisible officer’s voice echoed throughout the courtyard as the two men turned quickly on their heels. The spell also utilizes my laptop’s built in high-tech gadgets to distract the vampires with miniature flashing bursts of light and high-frequency waveforms that impede the brain’s synaptic impulses.

By themselves the effects were minor, however, when combined they gave me my first advantage in the confrontation.

Of course, I am in no hurry to face two vampires head-on by myself so I take liberty of the opportunity and make a straight dash for the university commons.

I smile to myself as I hear the invisible policeman order the two men to lie down on the ground. It won’t take long for them to realize that there’s no policeman at all. And then the hunt will be on.

My heart is pounding in my chest like a jackhammer as I leap across the entire street seperating me from the university commons. Its amazing what the subconscious mind will take control of during one’s "fight or flight" response. I know for a fact that I didn’t have a single spell in my arsenal to create the effect. And yet there is no denying the presense of magick as I could feel my body slipping across the borders of space, literally "flying" over the paved intersection.

With an audible clap between my shoes and the sidewalk my mind was wrenched from back to reality and my subconscious need for survival once more took over.

The usual corner of my shades flashed to life with the image of the two vampires hot on my heels. Thank god I had SPRITE to keep me focused.

"Shit, they're moving fast." I whispered into the wireless mouthpiece. "The university surveillance cameras are barely even picking them up, even with your 'enhancements'". I used another ounce of adrenaline to leap up all ten stairs leading to the commons.

"Maybe you upset their superiority complexes?" SPRITE teased sarcastically from the safety of home. Solid oak double doors slammed hard against adjoining walls as I shouldered my way inside.

Several students inside the commons looked up and a few faces that I recognized smirked. But most students were used to seeing their fellow classmates stressed out beyond reason. Everyone returned to their reading and studying without a moment’s hesitation.

Nervously surveying the hallway I locate a wooden flag pole holding up the university insignia and quickly force it through the door handles and brace it against the wall. For the moment I’ve barred the door but there’s no reasonable way that’s going to hold off a pair of angry vampires.

Flipping open my laptop quickly I slide down against the wall and access the building’s systems. I plug in a wireless modem into the wall outlet and open a DOS coding window. The door begins to shake as the vampires reach it and start pounding. This time everyone looks up and closes their books.

I engage the wall structure of the building via the modem plugged into the wall and I rapidly construct a spell that seals the doors. Without a chance to debug the program I compile and run it actively. With a soft hiss and bright flashing light the seams and gaps in the double doors close up.

The door pounds again a few more times before they give up on that entrance. I sigh.

I know they haven’t given up. They’ve just moved on to another entrance. But at least it will give me some time. Time to think. Time to act. Time to survive.

I wipe the back of my hand across my forehead as I try to relax. Covered in sweat, my forehead is burning up. My heart is beating like a freight train. I have to focus.

“SPRITE?” I whisper over the Bluetooth.

“Yes, love.”

“Keep an eye on those fuckers. I have to focus on getting the innocent bystanders out of this building.”

“Roger roger.” She whispers back and I can already see her patching into the campus systems remotely.

I press the button on the side of my cellphone where its attached to my belt and the voice-activation feature takes over. Right now I don’t have the luxury of typing in the commands for my spells. I need my hands to be free.

I whisper my first shortcut command into the Bluetooth.

"Lights out."

Instantly the port accesses every electrical receptacle in the entire three-floor tall, two-block long building and shuts off the power. Even though I’m was expecting it, its bizarre for everything to suddenly black out. Every human alive today knows the feeling. Our lives are so controlled and permeated by electrical appliances and gadgets, we feel naked without them.

Next I take advantage of one of the subroutines called by the Distraction spell. I whisper the words “Soundeffect. Gunfire.” Into the Bluetooth and immediately loud gunfire fills the commons area.

Massive panic and hysteria surge as everyone tries to get out. A few more whispered words and the emergency exit signs light up..

The Soundeffect routine is still running as one of the last commanded spells processed on my laptop. Striking the up arrow twice it pops up on the DOS screen. I strike the carriage return a few times and the following gunshots send the last remaining students and staff racing for the exit.

"They’re moving to find another way into the building." SPRITE's digital voice pipes in, bringing me back to the true danger at hand. "I think they heard the gunshots."

Punching in the infrared filtering again, I scan the room quickly to make sure that none of the warm bodies stayed behind. Satisfied, I close my laptop and slide it neatly inside my carrying case.

"Structural blueprints. Spectral Filtering." I whisper into the Bluetooth and, again, the data port blugged into the building’s power outlet performs the preprogrammed functions. The upper left hand corner of my sunglasses displays an all encompassing blueprint of the three floors of the complex and a bright red pattern, indicating where I am inside the building. As soon as the vampires make it inside, I’ll know.

Then things would really get interesting. But until then I needed to find a dark isolated corner of the building and start writing programs. I had a lot of work to accomplish before I could set the next trap, and time was ticking.