Wesley walked over to the computer screen and watched as a symbol appeared where the DNA signatures of Katarina and Spike were located. “Quite clever. Clever, indeed. But look where they are. It appears to be very remote. Miles from the nearest town. Perhaps they have found a cave, or a cabin in the woods.” He didn’t know if that was a good sign or a bad sign. However, Katie was right in that if Kat had her powers and was able and free to use them, she would have contacted us somehow.
“I propose that we send a reconnaissance team to that locale at once. That team needs to be heavily armed in case of, shall we say, logistical problems. Katie, I know you want to go yourself, but your special abilities are needed here to keep this place safe and running. You are your mother’s replacement, and as such, you’ve become invaluable.” In other words, they couldn’t risk her running around in the woods where she might fall victim to the same fate that ensnared Katarina.
One of the guards approached Wes and informed him that Angel, Buffy, and the slayer potentials had returned, and they had two captive zombies plus a woman who had been fighting them. “Excellent! Katie, if you’ll excuse me, I need to attend to this significant development.”
Wes move to Part 3
Angel and the others had locked the two zombies into a high security cell on the far side of the penitentiary from the tuberculosis/typhoid wing that Wes and Katie had been preparing for the undead. Wes arrived to find Buffy and Angel conversing sharply with a woman now housed in a cell next to the two zombies. Angel was demanding to know who she worked for. He explained to Wes that they’d been ambushed on the way back to the penitentiary by two men and this woman. The men had escaped, but the woman was captured. She was small but well-muscled. An angry red scar, perhaps from a recent knife wound, ran down her left cheek. Her gaze was feral, wild, and angry. She appeared mentally unstable.
“Angel, this one isn’t going to cooperate with us willingly. We’ll inject her with truth serum tomorrow.” At that, she jumped up, grabbed the bars, and spit at Wes. He calmly wiped the spittle off then went to the next cell to examine the zombies. “Excellent job! These two will do quite well. But we’ll need to move them to the old tuberculosis/typhoid wing in the morning.” It was, of course, morning now. He meant later in the morning. Right now he needed some sleep. “Katie and I have been preparing a laboratory where we can perform experiments on them.” Lab rats. They didn’t respond, though. They were beyond comprehending human speech.
Katie saw as Wes walked into the room. He looked like he expected a whole lot more. Wes kept looking around for who knows what. He did find her hidden spells on the walls. When he saw what was behind her drapes, she had to chuckle. "You really expect me to be my mother and father's daughter and not have some protection set up. I take no chances on invaders. That is why I set up those alarms to go off. That way, if any problems took place, I would instantly know." She grabbed the chair in front of her desk, turned it back, and sat down.
" Well, you have already stated what was on my mind, more or less. Given that the spells mom has put up are failing does indicate one thing or another. I am more than willing to bet that she is in some trouble. I say this because the loss of magical usage is too random. Mom knows where she has invested her magic. She would pull from lesser vital areas of the facility. For example, mom would not take energy from the front gate. I don't believe that it is that fact that she is so far from that compound because she would have found another way to secure things. That or not opted to leave. That only leaves two things. That she has met with death, and it ended badly. That one, I do not believe. I feel as if I would have a sign of some kind. So, there is only one factor to ponder." Katie paused for effect. Letting all that she said settle."Mom, dad, and the crew ran into some issues. I am guessing that they have blocked her magic somehow.
I am very concerned about all of them. Part of me wants to rush out to find them, but I know mom would tell me to stay and look after things here. Humm, I have a thought it may or may not work.
We are currently using the combination of magic and computers to make things work. What if I took it a step further and used a touch of science and utilized a little of mom and dad's DNA into the works? That would produce a way to locate them. Then, in turn, develop a magical biometric tracking program. I have a readout of their blood samples."
Katie ran over to where she kept the records that held the DNA records of everyone in the compound. Finding Kat and Spikes, she goes over to her laptop. Pulling up the proper programs, Katie pops in the information on her parents. Lastly, she pulls up a map of Tennessee and ties it in with a bit of magic. There was a sound of electronic buzzing, and the screen flashed black then white. After a few moments, a cross between a GPS and a sonar map popped up. Suddenly a couple of blips appeared. "Eeeppp!" Katie squealed. "I have to be honest. I did not think it was going to work." She zoomed in on to where they were." Ok, we have the details as to where they are. Now we need to find out what is in that general area.
Wes watched as Katie used her thumbs to type away at lightning speed on her phone. He gathered there were problems with some of the magic that Katarina had implemented here at the penitentiary to keep the lights on and such. His first thought was that didn’t bode well for Katarina and perhaps Spike, too. He didn’t want to focus on the negative, but if Kat’s magic had just blinked off, perhaps Katarina is unconscious or worse. A rescue party could be dispatched, but the pair had traveled to Sevierville, which was miles away. They may have run into trouble there, or somewhere between here and there. Finding them could be problematic at best, and certainly risky no matter how it went.
Katie ordered Wes to follow her to her room, which was a place he had never been. Few had. It was rumored to be protected with various and powerful spells. When he entered the place, it was a bit of a letdown. He was expecting posters of pop icons and her favorite bands hung on walls painted purple, or perhaps multiple colors. Where was the starburst on the ceiling? Or those glow-in-the-dark stars? Didn’t girls like those things? There was a laptop, but it all looked rather Spartan. Oddly, the walls were covered with decorative drapery. Curious, he pulled back one of those drapes and saw what it was hiding. “Good Lord!” He turned that drape loose and let it fall back over the magical glyph.
He sat down and into a cavernous bean bag chair, wondering if he would be able to extricate himself from it. “Katie, I think these problems we’re having underscore the importance of a two-pronged approach to running this facility. The mystical locks on the gate are fine and good, but there should be a heavy chain and a padlock, too. We need backup generators and fuel. Greenhouses for the garden. Power tools so we can fix things sans magic.” In point of fact, Katarina and Spike had traveled to Sevierville to acquisition the things that Wesley had just named.
Which brought him back around to Katie’s parents. “Now Kaitlyn, I wouldn’t come to any dire conclusions yet about your mother. She may simply be out of range to maintain the magical machinations here. She may have had to cut back, magically speaking, for some reason to deal with some crisis with which they were dealing. There are any number of possible explanations.”
But he could tell she needed to talk to him. He shifted his weight in the chair and slumped further into it. He was beginning to think he would have to roll out of this ridiculous chair. “Now Kaitlyn. What was it you wanted to talk to me about?”
As Wes was talking Katie, glanced around. She took down notes on what required fixing. Katie pulled out her camera and used it to take pictures of the damaged areas. She had just taken her last photo of the area. Then her first alarm sounded on her phone. A bell flashed red and blue. Below the bell, there was a message. It stated that some of the magicks had gone down.
Katie turned to Wes. "We have to go and go now!" Given the look of questioning shock on his face, she answered the silent question. " I set in some magical alarms and linked them to my phone to go off. Alerting me if something goes sideways. This way, the whole compound does not get frightened, keeping chaos from taking place."
As Katie was rambling all of this to Wes, she had begun running down the path. Retracing their steps and leading them back to the other part of the compound. She tapped a few instructions on her phone as they arrived at the gathering area inside the compound. At first glance, nothing seemed to be wrong.
Looking down at her phone, she could see that some of her mom's magical implants started to fail one by one. The locks to the gates that kept the infected ones out had failed. Katie had to focus. Fixing this task was not beyond her power but was a bit of a stretch. Katie had to focus and visualize the gate, relock it mentally and put a hold on it.
Another alert came across her phone. The magic that her mother had set up to power everything was fixing to go down. The gate locks were the first clue in the magic failure. Katie had a fleeting fear that something had gone sideways with her mom and dad. Katie was worried bout her parents. But she could hear her mom in the back of her head. 'Take care of the compound and our people first.' This is the action that her mom would want her to take. Katie knew it in her heart.
She had to act fast. The next thing to come across her phone was the garden. It would frost over quickly if she didn't do something fast. Her aunt Willow had given her every one of her magical notes that she had ever found or created throughout her life. Katie had organized them, where she could find any of them with a simple word search. She typed in the heated garden. The proper spell came up, and she hit a voice recording. It sounded like her aunt. The phone indicated that it was intact and working. Katie's phone kept going off, alerting her to another possible magical crashing. Katie was able to catch every one of them and fix them all before anything could go wrong. She had everything set in place for the moment. She put a monitor on everything to keep an eye on them.
She clicked an app that linked to a magical lighting system. Various coloring and flashing patterns meant different things. The one she typed in was telling everyone to return to their proper assigned quarters at an arranged time this evening, and everyone would be in a lockdown till further notice.
Katie turned to Wes, "Let's go. My room, now!" Katie did not want to talk in the open as they were. Her living area contained an assortment of all kinds of protection spells. She even had glyphs painted on her walls. Of course, no one ever saw them. She had them covered by artistic drapery. These tapestries were given to her by her boyfriend, Drayco. Katie knew there was no chance of anyone overhearing her talk in here.
Young Katie wanted to go for a walk, apparently. Wes shrugged internally. “I would propose that we investigate the structural damage in the first-floor corridor that connects this tuberculosis/typhoid wing of the prison to the main installation. Perhaps it can be repaired. I’d rather not have to trudge through the weather and the cold or heat every time we need to work in this laboratory.” It was easy enough to find the way. There was a sign above a set of double doors that read “To Ward C”. Ward C was the maximum-security portion of the penitentiary, which for the most part was unused by their group. Most of the cells remained locked and so far they hadn’t found a way to unlock them. So it was mostly corridors and rows of locked cells. But Ward C connected with the other wards, including administration and the medium-security areas that they’d made into multi-functional and propitious business and residential habitations.
Wes pushed opened the double doors, and he and Katie followed a darkened corridor that smelled of must and mildew. Spiders the size of silver dollars scuttled from their sticky webs into darkened recesses, and rats sat boldly on window sills, their noses wriggling. Water dripped from the ceiling. At one point, Wes almost stepped on a skeleton of what could only have once been a large snake. It lacked rattles on the tail, so it had probably been something non-venomous. A ratsnake or something similar.
When they entered Ward C, a large owl flushed from the metal rafters, circled around twice, and then pressed its wings to its body and dove through a gaping hole in the wall. Pigeons in the rafters rustled and cooed, but did not fly. As they walked, they peered into the darkness of the cells. Those cells were about 8 by 10 feet and included a metal bed frame and spring mattress, a toilet, and a window that was barred and must have been only 4 by 6 inches. Wesley imagined prisoners standing at those small windows on the world to glimpse a tiny part of what they had sacrificed by perpetrating their particular crime. Wes shivered. “I know murderers and rapists and thieves have to pay a price. But people who spend years in a place like this, they’re not going to be rehabilitated. They’re likely to just get angrier, crazier.” He wasn’t going to say it, but he was thinking it might have been more humane just to execute them.
They came to the problem, or at least the beginning of it. At the distal end of Ward C, at the beginning of the corridor to the medium-security ward, the ceiling was collapsed and the walls were tumbled in. “It looks as though a bomb went off here.” He didn’t see a way through.
All Katie could do was smile. Her mentor was like a kid at Christmas getting a new toy. "There is no need for it to recharge the box. Think of it as a magical solar-powered unit.
"The box can administer multiple amounts of energy to each separate item plugged into its slot. For example, you plug in your laptop in one but need a 120v in the other one. You can use the 120v item as well. The orb can adapt to multiple voltages at one time; without any concern about blowing out the item that takes less."
Wes spotted a closet along a wall and walked over to it. Upon finding a fuse box for the room. He flicked a few switches and power buzzed lighting up the room. She had to smile at his scientific mind. " Yes, oh great Yoda I can literally see that, my wise teacher." Wes went back to serious mode. They walked past some of the cells. Some repair jobs needed to be done before they could even put the creaturs in them. Wes had some good questions going on. Guess they would find answers to these things.
As Katie was thinking along the thought path that Wes was on, she began to become to get a tad bit concerned. She didn't want anyone in danger. On the other hand part of her kinda wanted to find a cure. She could feel that her mom was not a fan of Wes's experimental ideas. There was a HUGE danger in doing so. The healthy humans here would be a walking buffy if anything escaped. But on the rare chance if Wes was the one to find a cure... they could save and cure the infected.
" The cells do need a lot of work, though. We will need to gather up as much metal and combine scientific knowledge and magic to create a metal that will be able to withstand a high magnitude earthquake. Given that fact we don't have a single idea as to how strong they can be. I say that we fix the water just in case they do drink it. For if they do we need to keep them hydrated as well. As for beading, we can work with those needs, too. Take old clothes, sew them together and have the cells prepped with bare minimal needs and then watch. My consern it to render the cells escape proof. Imagine you are trying to contain the man of steel and have no criptonenite to make him weak. To answer your question bought boxes. Yes, there is enough unusable scrap for me to recreate quite a bit of the box.
Why don't we take a brake and check on the rest of the compound? We have been down here for a while. That way we can assist with what needs to be done and fixed. I can make boxes as well." She stood there looking at Wes. Waiting for him to respond.
Wesley arched an eyebrow as he took the magic electrical box from Katie. He held it up to examine it, turning it from side to side. “Four outlets. 110 volts I presume?” He glanced at the girl. “Certainly it is not a perpetual energy supply, or is it?” Anything is possible with magic. “Or shall I ask, how often does it have to be recharged? If it is like a rechargeable lead-acetate battery, then presumably it can only be drawn down a small amount. If similar to a lithium-ion battery, it could be drawn down to about 20 percent of its capacity without damaging it. So what do we have here, Katie? And assuming it does need occasional recharging, can you equip it with a warning light that would inform the user of that need?”
He began to assess all the things that would need to be plugged in. There were lights on the two microscopes, the spectrometer, they’d need one of the blood gas analyzers, one of the hoods, an autoclave, one each for the two assessors, one for his laptop, and perhaps a couple more just in case. “Could you, by any chance, produce two more of these useful little generators/inverters? I think that would just about do it.”
“Although…” he frowned and looked around the room. “Perhaps in that unassuming closet.” He pointed to a door on the right of the DNA assessor, then walked over and opened it. “Yes, just as I surmised!” Inside was a fuse box, which he opened and found that three of the switches were in the off position. Fortunately, the switches were labeled. One was for the overhead lights. He switched that one into the on position and, walla, they had buzzing fluorescent lights again. “As you can see, my young magician friend, not everything depends on magic.”
Together they explored the residency rooms that adjoined the laboratory. There were four of them, although they would only need two. Wesley had hoped for more, but Angel only committed to attempting to catch two zombies for his experiments. “The rooms are spartan, to say the least. But it’s not like we need 5-Star accommodations for the undead.” The rooms each had a small table and chair, a bed, and an adjoining bathroom. Two of the rooms had acceptable mattresses that weren’t too chewed up by rodents. Wes tried the faucet at the sink. He had no hope for hot water, so he turned the cold knob. The pipes whined and moaned for a few moments, then a rust-brown fluid squirted into the sink. Wes quickly turned it off. “Well, I don’t think zombies drink water. They certainly won’t need the toilet.” He paused, “Probably won’t even need the bed.” Do zombies sleep? Wes saw this as an opportunity to better define the natural history of zombies – how they spend their time, what they need and don’t need. If these were more normal times, answers to those questions, combined with the results of the experiments they would carry out, would be worthy of a research paper in a natural history journal.
“Well, I suppose all we can do now is wait.” He glanced at Katie, “Assuming you can conjure two more of your magical generators/inverters.”
Katie watched as her mentor started plugging in items. So far, so good. He became hopeful as two items came to life with just a touch of flickering from the overhead light. Upon plugging in the third one, everything went dark. There was a blast of flame that jumped from the outlet. Katie reacted swiftly with one thought and extracted just enough oxygen from within the location. This act kept Wes from being engulfed in the arc flames. She snapped her fingers, and little witch lights bounced around the room like fireflies illuminating the room.
Wes seemed to be unharmed. Aside from being a bit startled. His British pride would not let him show that. She had to give a low chuckle. Mr. man, keeping calm as not to frighten little woman. Now that she had enough light. She went to work building her box. With the help of magic, she welded the welded it together. She carved an outlet in it. Then with a word, an electrical ball was inside.
There was no harm to anyone from the electrical ball in the box. Its only purpose was to power items. The need for the box was to contain the charge and give it direction. As an afterthought, she snapped her fingers and added three more outlets. Katie then turned to Wes with a smile on her face. "Here you go, give it a try. There is no risk of shock or power surge. It only gives enough power to whatever the said item needs."
Wesley refrained from elevating an eyebrow. But while rubbing at his chin, he said, “Small electrical energy ball. Yes, that’s one possible solution.” Katie’s mother had been performing similar magic throughout the penitentiary to keep the lights on, so to speak, without any serious mishaps. But was young Katie up to the task? And what were the consequences if she wasn’t?
“Yet there is no need to tax your not unsubstantial supernatural strengths if there are more mundane solutions.” He pointed to the buzzing fluorescent lamps above their heads. Two of the bulbs were blown out and several others were flickering as if their days or hours were numbered. “Apparently, there is a power source here, although just how strong and dependable it may be awaits further investigation.”
There were three laboratory fume hoods. Wesley couldn’t imagine a need for more than one. “Let’s try a little experiment, shall we?” He found the plug to one of them and inserted it into the wall outlet. He then switched the machine on. A light illuminated the working area under the hood, which was an encouraging sign. Then he flipped the switch on the hood itself, which started the fan that would carry toxic fumes up into ductwork above their heads and presumably to the outside. It all seemed to work. Wesley smiled at Katie, “So far so good.” But would the circuitry hold up to multiple apparatus running at the same time? Perhaps they should wait for Jared to inspect the wiring.
With confidence running through his veins and not really wanting to wait for Jared’s inspection, Wesley plugged in yet another fume hood and switched it on. The overhead lights flickered for a moment, but both hoods were now illuminated and running. “Excellent. Now let’s try one thing more.”
He decided upon the hematology spectrometer, a piece of equipment that he would need to research before he could operate it to its full potential, but a crucial part of his experiments was analyzing the nature and components of zombie blood. The spectrometer was perched upon stainless shelving on wheels, which Wes moved close to a wall outlet. With the plug in hand, he said, “Now with a little luck…”
When he inserted the plug into the outlet, it was forcefully ejected along with a burst of flames. The room went dark and the fume hoods whirred to a stop. Wes sat on the floor and ran his fingers through his hair. “Damn.” But he confidently stood and brushed himself off, then addressed young Katie, “Alright then, Plan B. Shall we try your energy ball?”