Azriel shook his head. “As I said, he is near and alive. I suspect, given that I cannot get any true sense of his location, that he might be underground somewhere.”
“How can he be underground when we’re up on the first floor? The vampires would have come through the ground floor, and there’s no other exit.”
“That we’re aware of. That doesn’t mean there isn’t another one. Stane is nothing if not clever.”
True. And given he dealt on a regular basis with some very shady characters, it wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility for him to have some sort of panic room. It would also explain why his phone signal had so suddenly cut off. Cell services were notoriously unreliable when it came to anything underground, like the rail loop, or even sewerage tunnels. Not that I really had firsthand experience of the latter, but if Stane did have a bolt-hole, then he undoubtedly also had an escape route out of said bolt-hole. And there were plenty of decommissioned sewer and utilities tunnels running underneath most parts of Melbourne.
I glanced around but couldn’t immediately see anything that screamed “hidey-hole”—which was the whole point of a panic room, really. But knowing Stane’s love of technology, it was doubtful that he’d be anywhere without some method of knowing what was going on above him.
“Stane?” I said, voice loud. “It’s safe to come out if you want to.”
There was no immediate response, but after several minutes there was a soft hiss, and part of the floor under his computer desk dropped down an inch and slid to one side. Two hands appeared, and with very little ceremony, Stane hauled himself back into the room.
“Fuck,” he said, face red and beaded with sweat. “That was more unpleasant than I remembered.”
I raised an eyebrow. “You’ve used your bolt-hole before?”
“Hell yeah.” He grabbed his desk with one hand and pulled himself upright. “You can’t play the black market game without occasionally hitting trouble. It’s been a few years, though, and I think I might have put on a bit of weight since I had it installed. Things were a little tight.”
“Better tight than you getting dead,” I said.
“Oh, definitely.” He plonked down on his chair, his expression grim. “So what did those bastards want with me?”
“Well, not you, for a start. They wanted me and were merely using you as bait.”
He glanced at the sprays and puddles of blood that decorated his living area. There were no bodies; even the vampire Azriel had decapitated had disappeared. I very much suspected Valdis’s fire had taken care of them while I was in the bathroom puking my guts out.
“It obviously didn’t go well for them,” Stane commented.
“No.” I glanced at the darkened bridge behind him. “How come you haven’t got a backup generator installed?”
“Oh, I have, but it only keeps the main computer system going, not the peripherals.”
“Peripherals being the light screens and keyboards?”
“No, they’re necessary and included. I just did a quick system shutdown when I saw the vamps entering. Didn’t want to chance them getting access to my baby.”
I snorted softly. He thought more of his computer’s safety than he did his own—anyone else would have disappeared into the panic room and let the computer fend for itself. I had no doubt it would take an exceptionally skilled hacker to access Stane’s system, even if he had left it on and running.
“I think you need to widen the net and include security in the systems it keeps going.”
“I think you could be right.” He swung around and splayed his fingers across a scanning pad on his desk. A second later, his bridge came back to life. “I guess the big question is, should I expect similar attacks, or will that be the last of it?”
“We don’t know,” I replied. “Azriel sent a warning to the council, but whether they’ll take any notice or not is another question.”
“And the would-be queen bee of said council?”
“Is another matter entirely.” My voice was grim. “But speaking of her, can I borrow your cell phone?”
“Sure, but why?” He dug his phone out of his pocket and tossed it over.
“Because I need to contact said queen bee.”
“Just as well I’ve enabled the scrambler for all but selected people,” he said. “I don’t want her getting hold of my number.”
“Stane, she’s Directorate.” I punched in Hunter’s number, and Space Invaders began to uniformly march across the screen as the phone connected. I smiled, then added, “She can get any number she wants anytime she wants.”
“Not this one, she won’t,” he said, amused. “When you get off the phone to her, I’ve got some information you might not want to see.”