I stood in front of Daniel dumbfounded. “I’m sorry, what did you say?”

Daniel shook his head and stared right into my eyes. “Look Vanessa…  I know this sounds completely crazy, but I swear I’m telling the truth.”

I nodded. “It’s not that I don’t believe, you, I really want to, but you’ll have to take me through this. Why now?”

“It’s a long story,” said Daniel, who then stopped abruptly. “Look, we haven’t got much time. I can see you've been trying to lead this thing to water. But that idea is a terrible one.”

“How so?”

“I guess we’d better start from the beginning, Van.”

“Ok, Daniel, I’m all ears. You seem to be the only one with a plan so far, so let’s hear it.”

“Remember who your father’s first big investor was?”

“That’s right, your father, Donald Ashcroft.”

Daniel nodded and raised his index finger. “In order to earn my father’s trust completely, and have both men go in as equal partners, your father had to give my father the ‘secret sauce’ so to speak.”

“You mean Donovan Hunter had to turn over the secrets to his technology? Why would he do that just to secure funding?”

Daniel pointed toward the Robotic Knight. “We’re running out of time quickly. Here, we can talk while we reach that thing. Would you mind flying me to it?”

I smiled. “You betcha.”

I moved behind Daniel, and put my hands on his shoulders. “I’m going to hold on to your shoulders while we go into the air. Are you ready for this?”

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” said Daniel with a smile, as he looked nervously back at me.

I grinned back at him as I launched myself into the air, taking great care to gently hoist Daniel below me so he could fly comfortably in position.

I exerted a light Nether Void around us both, to shield Daniel from the pressure and the air pockets. I really needed him in one piece if he was going to help out.

“I must admit, this is pretty exhilarating," called Daniel from below me. The Nether Void allowed us to hear each other as we flew through the air. I saw Daniel looking down at the ground, surveying the vampires in the city below us: a moving, almost hypnotic sea of the disgustingly pale and emaciated creatures. The stench in the city below must be horrifying at this point. “What the hell are those things?” he asked.

“Trust me, you’re better off not knowing,” I laughed. “Ok, now that we’re airborne, would you mind completing your story?”

“Donovan didn’t simply turn over the key to his technology,” said Daniel. “He would never have been so foolish.” Daniel looked up at me with a strange look on his face. “So instead, he gave my father insurance.”

I smiled. “Donovan turned over the kill-switch.”

“Exactly right - always the smart one, Vanessa,” said Daniel as he grinned at me.

“But if there was an override all along, why did you wait until now to use it?”

“We’re going to get to that part later. You’re still missing a big part of this story,” said Daniel. “My father underestimated the brilliance of Donovan Hunter. Imagine if you will, the nanomachines working with, and communicating with each other.”

“Okay, we knew that.”

“Yes, but do you know by what mechanism this is accomplished?”

“Radio frequencies?” I asked.

“Come on Vanessa,” said Daniel. “You know this stuff!”

“That’s the current method we’re employing in the current generation of Hunter Robotics’ nanomachines. That, and electron pulses.”

“Donovan Hunter’s nanomachines exchange information with each other at the molecular level.”

“But wait, there are several technological and physical hurdles to overcome for such a thing to happen,” I said.  “For one, molecular communication requires an aqueous environment…” I stopped. “Oh my God, I’m such a fool!”

“That’s why we need to reach this thing before it goes into the sea and becomes an even bigger problem. Not to put any more pressure on you Van, but if we fail to reach this thing and it reaches the ultimate environment, it’s game over for us.”

“Daniel, if Ashcroft Pharmaceutical had access to this technology long ago, why didn’t you use it?”

“All we really had was the kill-switch. Once the technology matured, the contract between my father and Donnie stated that the machines would be mass-produced, and that Ashcroft would share in the profits at that point.”

I stared ahead at the robotic knight. We were gaining on it, which was very good news. The sea of vampires below continued to lead the robotic knight on. Part of me hoped that the knight would somehow be able to devise a way out of the vampires’ path. “My father never lived up to his word, did he?”

Daniel shook his head. “Several years ago, your father changed. When my father confronted him about his misuse of the technology, he became angry; agitated. There was already evidence at the time that the machines were taking over his life. Back then, your father hadn’t quite figured out how to assimilate the machines into his own body, but it wasn’t that difficult to see at the time that Donnie would one day be able to do it.”

“So when my father wouldn’t back off, Donald just gave up?”

“No Vanessa, my father never gave up, but all he had in the end was the kill-switch. He couldn’t stop Donovan Hunter’s descent into madness.”

 “So this thing, you think it was drawn to the building because of the kill-switch?”

“Yes.  The kill-switch sends a pulse that only the nanomachines can detect. But the pulse triggers a reaction in each machine that prevents it from bonding to each other at a molecular level.”

“Daniel, a device like that is even more advanced than the nanotechnology my father developed. “

“That’s correct, Vanessa. Donnie Hunter gave my father, what is effectively, a working molecular descrambler. It’s imperfect, but it does the trick.”

“How in the world would Donovan have something like…” I stopped. “Goddamit. It’s a byproduct of what he learned from his experiments with the Van Dyke powers.”

“Excuse me?” Daniel asked.

“Nothing you would want to know any more about, trust me,” I said laughing.

“Still withholding an awful lot from me aren’t we, Haley?” remarked Daniel, a glum look on his face.

“Trust me, what I do, I do to protect you. There’s something else that bothers me though,” I said continuing, “Why didn’t you use the descrambler before now? We certainly could have used it when we were taking on Rina and my father back then.”

“Because there was an override to the descrambler that we didn’t know about,” said Daniel.

“An override?”

Daniel sighed. “We didn’t know that the nanomachines had shrunk small enough to be assimilated into your father’s cells. When Donovan Hunter bonded himself with the nanomachines, his molecules, different from the nanomachines’ cellular structure, acted as a bonding agent, preventing the molecules from descrambling.”

“Oh my God,” I said, my heart almost stopped as I realized the implications. “If this thing reaches Lake Michigan, it would have a bonding agent powerful enough to act effectively against the descrambler.”

“Now you realize the gravity of the problem at hand,” said Daniel.

“But why didn’t it make for the water immediately?”

“I don’t think it realizes it yet. From what my father shared with me, the machines are intelligent, but not educated. Donovan was the intelligence driving the machines forward. Now that the machines have attained free will, they are exploring the environment on their own, expanding their consciousness like a neural network, in a manner very similar to how our own brain functions. It’s very effective and predictably indicative of Donovan’s genius. But the nanomachines are like newborns in a way, still naïve; still learning new things every step of the way. That is something we can use to our advantage.

“So we can assume it still needs to figure out that the water makes for a great bonding agent.” I said.

“Perhaps so,” said Daniel.

“Daniel, does this mean you knew all along that my father was alive?”

“I’m sorry, Vanessa. My father had a hunch that Donnie faked his death and went in hiding. But we weren’t completely certain he was still alive. That’s why my father kept the kill-switch and its presence hidden from everyone. He said that your life would be in grave danger if you even so much as knew what we suspected,” Daniel stopped. “I… had I known you were going to be killed anyway, I would have said something earlier.”

“But even then, you continued to suspect my father was in hiding?”

“Well, sort of,” said Daniel sheepishly. “Think of it this way: we never really had any proof to substantiate my father’s hunch. And because your father did such a good job of remaining out of the public eye and keeping his activities hidden, it made us all complacent. No one would have ever thought he was hiding in plain sight.”

“Did you suspect my father was posing as Robert Mayer?”

“You give me far too much credit, Vanessa.”

I looked down below us. The sea of vampires was doing its job of leading the robotic knight to Lake Michigan. In fact, they were performing their function far too well for comfort. I sent out a thought, hoping Death would hear me, but due to the fact that he was so focused on finding Katsujinken, the probability was higher that he wasn’t going to hear me. And Gregor Vincent was too far away for me to even catch up to, much less warn him about the imminent threat.

We were left with little choice in the matter. Daniel and I had to catch up to Robotic Knight, and get close enough to it for Daniel to activate the descrambler. I looked up and began estimating the robotic knight’s trajectory. It was a mere five miles away from the coast.

The nano-knight was going to reach Lake Michigan in the next five minutes.

I'm really sorry folks, it's been a while since the last update! Work has been very busy and it's been harder to find time to write. I do hope you guys liked this update! Please don't forget Vote, Add to your library, and comment, comment comment! Every little thing counts, it really does! You guys rock! :D