Hello Friends and neighbors, it's the long awaited of 'Dark Knight of the Soul. Bet you thought I'd forgotten it. Well, I have been busy on other projects (shout out to all of you who have been reading 'Day 2 Reloaded'. But I have a new beta, (thank you WingedSeraph) and we are ready at last to move forward. (Incidentally, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that she's just broken ground on 'Saints and Sinners', a CSI fic. Check it out)

The technology that I mention in this chapter exists, at least in some form. I'm not relying on any single comic book as my source, so blame me if I screw up somewhere.

Chapter 9

As Andrew looked down from the steeple of the Clock Tower to Gotham City below, he couldn't help noticing the majestic brilliance of the landscape. Each time the reds and purples of the sunset faded into the horizon of the skyscrapers, there seemed to be something proud and stunning about the entire perspective.

"Enjoying the view?"

Andrew turned around as Barbara Gordon's wheelchair moved towards him. "I suppose that Los Angeles is a great place to live," he said slowly, "but even without knowing about the demons that lurk behind every corner, it still comes across imposing and threatening."

"Well, Gotham isn't exactly what you'd call Smallville." Barbara said quietly.

Andrew gave a small smile. "Los Angeles and Gotham City are huge, towering places that could swallow you whole," he said, "and in both of them there are lots of nasty, evil things that could digest you painfully. LA's so big that even in the daytime it seems dangerous. But here---" He gestured towards the cityscape, "it actually seems like it's safe."

Barbara revealed a small painful smile of her own. "Believe me, there are plenty of monsters out in the sun."

Andrew looked at the city once again. "I know that. " He sighed. "It's just nice to think that—sometimes—they aren't there. Maybe it's naïve, but…" He trailed off.

Barbara considered this. "I felt the same way once." She showed a real smile this time. "It's nice to know someone else still does."

His smile disappeared. "Probably won't be able to much longer," he said sadly. "The darkness is getting deeper."

"Yes," said Barbara. "It is." She turned her wheelchair around. "Come on, Andrew. We have to get to work."

Andrew looked out at the city as the sun sank into the horizon. He turned around before the rest of the light in the sky died as well.

Andrew didn't know what Faith had needed to do in order to convince Batman and the others that he could be trusted. All he knew was that a week after he had arrived in Gotham he had received an email with the message: "Clock Tower, 12:01 tomorrow."

The sender had somehow used an email address that didn't seem to exist. Andrew had only been mildly impressed by this seeing as how it was a move that any middling hacker, himself included, could pull off. What was more impressive was the fact that Andrew had not given out his email address to anyone in Gotham City. Neither Faith nor Spike had brought a computer with them, saying they were relying on him to get things set up, and his address was not the same one that he used when he had communicated with anyone previously.

One thing Andrew did know was that the sender could be anyone on either side of the law and that it was likely possible he was walking into a trap. Knowing this, when he showed up at the clock tower that night, he had come armed with a crossbow and a Sig Sauer that he had purchased prior to his trip to Gotham. He was a geek, not an idiot.

At first, it seemed like a wild goose chase when he found no one on the ground floor and no lights on anywhere. It was a measure of how much tougher his hide had become that when an elevator had opened in a shaft that seemed empty before he didn't blink. Later on, he admitted to himself that he would have been far more unnerved if the car he had gotten into had gone down instead of up, which was what he had expected to happen. He still wasn't sure why he had been certain of that.

The elevator had risen and for such a long time too that he wondered if he was in 'Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" doomed to ride until eventually he blasted through the roof. When the door had opened, however, he had been a little surprised at what he had found.

There were monitors everywhere. Some of them showed the outside of buildings and others looked like they were showing ordinary streets. Interspersed among the monitors were police radios and CB radios, and off to one side of the room was a giant computer screen.

All of this Andrew had noticed in passing but what his eyes were drawn to was a giant display case located in the center of the room. Under it was a complete Batman suit--- cowl, gloves, utility belt --- and though the differences were subtle, he knew that it was a suit meant to be worn by a woman.

"I guess it does draw attention." Andrew turned to the source of the voice (to find that it came from a dark-haired, moderately attractive woman who couldn't be much older than him. There was no danger that she would be defined by her looks, however; because your eyes were instantly drawn to the high-powered wheelchair that she was in. "Sometimes seeing it makes me happy," The smile on her face disappeared. "Other times---"

Andrew now had enough experience dealing with big surprises that he recovered very quickly. He realized in ten seconds exactly who this woman was. "You're Oracle," he said calmly.

"Call me Barbara," she said, closing the distance between them until she was less than a foot away, "and you must be Andrew Gruzynski."

He was put off-balance only for a moment. "So I guess once you were---" He trailed off and gestured towards the costume.

"Batgirl," she said without flinching.

Questions immediately came to Andrew but he knew that he would probably do well not to be distracted. "You've met with Faith," he said in his best Timothy Dalton- as- James Bond tone.

"I have."

"Then you know what's happening."

"I do."

Great, Captain Obvious. Maybe you can ask about her wheelchair next. He recovered and asked the next question. "What do you need from me?"

"That depends. What exactly do you bring to all this?" asked Barbara.

Another good question. Andrew had been pondering it ever since he had volunteered to go to Gotham City. He was calling himself 'Faith's watcher' but he didn't think that he had any real claim to the title. He knew what Faith and Spike brought to the party, but even though his mastery of fighting skills had been slowly improving ever since the fall of Sunnydale, he wasn't even at Xander's level. He was intelligent but not nearly at the level of Giles or Fred, and his computer hacking skills, while very good, were nowhere near the level of Willow's.

He decided to try the old answer-questions-with-a-question approach. "What are you going to be doing?"

"The same thing that I've been doing, help Batman defend the city." There was a touch of sadness in Barbara's voice.

"And you do that with this equipment?" Andrew gestured around the room. "Along with the help of… other people?"

"I have a small contingent of people working for me."

Andrew hadn't really heard the last part. His attention had been drawn to the various screens and digital readouts that were scattered around the Clock Tower. There were several closed-circuit cameras--- VGA, SVGA and a couple of megapixels, though Andrew had seen very few megapixels that showed pictures this clear. There were a series of devices that had to be electronic tags. There were monitors using advanced global positioning systems. There were computers showing biometric screening that was extra-advanced. There were pictured so detailed and advanced that they had to be from government surveillance, though Andrew doubted that the countries who used knew who was utilizing them. And there, highlighted against the top wall----

"You're running inverse surveillance?" Andrew asked.

Oracle didn't deny this. "Occasionally. Mainly on individuals that deserve it."

"There are a lot of people who deserve it. There just aren't enough companies that manufacture the equipment," Andrew walked over to the camera on the wall. "That's not EyeTap, it's got no Hewlitt Packard or Nokia trademarks, and" he gently he picked up one of the devices "it's not Japanese or Korean, the other major countries that handle sousveillance equipment."

Oracle face gave little away, but she seemed impressed. "There are a series of companies operating out of the former Eastern bloc that used to subcontract for the KGB," she told Andrew. " When communism fell, thy continued the work in the private sector, selling this kind of technology to the highest bidder."

Andrew had considered this. "Which leads to the obvious question: where's the money's come from?" he asked. "I know for a fact, crime-fighting doesn't pay the bills that well."

"There are some altruistic people who want us to succeed." Oracle held up a finger. "Those are all of the secrets I'm going to reveal right now, Andrew, so I wouldn't press your luck."

The remark was arrogant, but Andrew figured a woman who had worn a cape and cowl was good at keeping secrets.

"All right. I guess you know what you're doing tech-wise," said Oracle. "The question is; can you handle it psychologically?"

This question surprised Andrew a little. " Handle what? The crisis in Gotham City? I've already handled two major emergencies in LA, and they were a heckuva a lot harder than this."

Oracle looked directly at him. "Really? You were on the front lines?"

Andrew found himself wilting a little under Oracle's gaze. "Well, I didn't handle them alone. I mean I wasn't in charge… these problems in California there, um, more of a group effort, you see… but my role was critical."

"What did you do?"

Oh boy. How to explain what had happened in LA. "Well, you see, it's a little complicated, but there was a prophecy about an apocalypse, and uh, the world was going to end, no question of that, so we needed to plan strategies involving stopping the raisings but, um…" Andrew bumbled through an explanation of what had happened in Los Angeles a few months ago. It was so jumbled and disorganized that even he would have had trouble understanding it, much less believing it.

When he was finished, Barbara fixed him with a sharp glance for several seconds. Finally she said: "Andrew, I'm not the kind of person who believes these kinds of things, and even if I did I wouldn't believe that particular story."

Andrew realized he was losing the argument so he tried to gather himself. "Look, Oracle—Barbara--- I may have made this story sound like Battlefield: Earth 2 but trust me, it happened. A lot of people were killed that day and a couple of them were close friends. I wasn't the hero of the show, I wasn't even crewman number six, but me and my friends--- and that includes Faith--- helped save the world. I'm not the expert at this, but there are some things that I do very well."

"Really." Barbara raised an eyebrow. "Such as?"

Now it was crunch time. Andrew had to come up with something and then he did. "The crime syndicates who are losing enforcers left and right."

"What about them?"

"Have you been able to chase down leads as to who's moving up in the organizations?"

"We've been monitoring them through various sources."

Andrew leaned forward. "What if I could get you direct information as to who's being blamed and who's being promoted?"

"And how would you do that?" There was no challenge in Barbara's voice, merely curiosity.

"Let me use your computer."

Oracle considered this for several seconds then turned her chair in the direction of the large computer at the center of the room. Andrew took this as a sign and walked rapidly towards there.

"I don't know what you expect to find that I haven't," said Barbara. "I've already gone through every major police and federal database. They don't have information in any of their reports."

"Those weren't the files I was going to look for." Andrew typed 'Search: Rupert Thorne, Companies Owned' on the screen. Almost instantly a long list of companies appeared. Some were filed under the heading: 'Known Owner', the other 'Silent Partner'. Andrew looked at the list for a few seconds then typed in one of the companies listed under the latter categories.

"I see what you're trying to do," said Barbara, "but it's not going to work. I already tried going through his emails and computer files. There's nothing there that I don't already know."

Andrew barely heard this as he was slowly typing in a series of commands that would open up the electronic workings that brought up Waterford Fisheries list of stockholders, which was surprisingly large for a business that only owned one building. The police knew that the waterfront office was involved in narcotics trafficking but could not legally tie Rupert Thorne to being behind it. Oracle knew because she was the one who had hacked into the fishery's records in order to get it, and Andrew knew because he had spent the better part of the last two weeks learning all the details behind some of Thorne's operation.

"You're not going to get anything, "said Oracle patiently. "The files protected with a Z-cube algorithm coding that puts up a new firewall every five minutes. There's no way to hack into it without risking the integrity of the sys---" Oracle stopped short as she watched the meaningless pattern of numbers on the screen disappeared to reveal the email account or Jimmy Kingsfield, one of the Thorne men in the fishery. "How the hell---"

"Well I'm no Seymour Berkoff, but I know my way around a hard drive." Andrew said with just a hint of pride.

He chose not to reveal to Oracle that the reason he had managed to hack into the coding so efficiently was because of his work at Wolfram & Hart's computer virus program--- which, many years ago had been specially designed for Rupert Thorne, one of the New York branches best customers.

"Like they say on TV, I'm smarter than the average hacker." Andrew said as he had begun to check Kingsfield's email.

And that was how he had proven himself to Oracle, which he guessed was enough to get him in with Batman. The superhero had only indirectly contacted him through Oracle, speaking to him only when she was in the room. Still, Andrew supposed he was lucky to even hear a word from the Dark Knight--- most of the law enforcement in Gotham did not.

That had been two weeks ago. He had been very busy since helping monitor the city and hack into criminals files full time, but he had some time to do some thinking. Even though he wasn't a genius, he had enough time to do some real deductive reasoning and several things had started to come together; things that he now felt he had to talk to Barbara about sooner rather than later. Right now they had work to do.

The strings of vampire like killings had trailed off or at least were now occurring below the radar. The mob-related vampire killings, however, were still going strong and that was their main priority, especially since half the police force was dealing with the jailbreak at Arkham six days previous. Nobody thought that the timing of the breakout was coincidental and now Barbara and Oracle were working practically non-stop in order to try and keep track of what was going on in the minefield that was now Gotham City.

"I just got into one of the emails from Bruno Carlisle," Barbara said as they entered the main lab.

"Doesn't ring a bell," Andrew admitted.

"There's no reason that it should." said Barbara. "Carlisle spent the last six months in Miami helping the Maroni's with that end of their cocaine dealership."

"So he's been freelancing freebasing."

Barbara fixed Andrew with a long look as the horribleness of what he had just said slowly registered with him. He decided to pretend that he hadn't said it and moved on. "So where did his name come up?"

"The sender tried to hide the origin point but I tracked it down to a low management man in Zeus Enterprises."

"Oh boy," said Andrew. "Is there any possibility that whoever sent the message was talking to Maxie Zeus himself?"

"No" said Barbara grimly, "but we can't completely dismiss it either."

Maxie Zeus was an odd hybrid in Gotham City--- not sinister enough to be a crime boss, not insane enough to be an arch-villain. Zeus was one of the richest men in the country and controlled a very dominant business empire. His activities had always been borderline illegal but at some point he had come to believe that he was the Greek god Zeus. This wasn't a false front, either--- he genuinely believed that he was the ruler of the universe. Unlike most patients at Arkham, the doctors had some success in treating Zeus of his delusion. They hadn't, however, touched the criminal part of his character.

"Do we have any idea on how to figure out if the man has been in contact with Zeus?" Andrew asked.

Oracle shook her head. "Zeus Enterprises doesn't have many operations in the South. At one point Zeus considered this part of the country 'too close to Hades' and shut down operations everywhere in that part of the South except for one city."

"Let me guess." said Andrew. "Atlanta." When Barbara nodded, he shook his head and said: "Love the logic of lunatics. So where does Carlisle fit into this picture?"

"I'm not completely sure. Carlisle's strictly a money man; doesn't deal with the muscle part of the business. The email does mention one more thing out of the ordinary. He says that he's never dealt with royalty before."

"That again," said Andrew wearily. "Half the emails we're intercepting have something about meeting with nobility or royalty. Is there any chance this is just a secret way for them to talk about Zeus?"

"That was my first thought but it doesn't add up," said Oracle in a puzzled tone. "A lot of these felons have never had any connection with Zeus and those who would deal with him think he's a loon rather than someone they would willingly serve."

"So all this chatter about royalty--- it's obviously some kind of code probably has something to do with some kind of new leader in the crime syndicates," said Andrew carefully. "I don't suppose there are any players around Gotham with a name like King or Lord or something."

"Worth a try." Oracle tapped on the keyboard and brought up a screen for her criminal database. Containing files from every major local and federal crime-fighting agency in the country, it was second only to Batman's in scope. She typed in the search parameters and in less than three seconds, the search had been narrowed down. Sort of.

"One hundred and eighty six names," said Andrew wearily. "Are we going to go name by name or do you want to split them up?"

"Hold on a second. I'll cut it down by rank," Oracle typed in a new search. This narrowed the list to fifty-nine. "These are the major players. I'll get a print out of their rap sheets, see if we can narrow it down a bit---"

"Wait a minute," said Andrew. A line of data had caught his eye. "Scroll down seven names."

Barbara looked momentarily puzzled then did so. "'Nick Prince, suspect in racketeering and narcotics trafficking, 1988.'" She turned to Andrew. "What's so special about him?"

"He was the subject of a federal investigation according to this."

"So?"

Andrew looked at the screen. "Where's his picture?"

"Maybe they never took one."

"Question: does the federal government ever proceed in investigating a suspected felon without getting some kind of identification?"

Barbara considered this for a several seconds. "It might have something to do with the security of the investigation. There's also a possibility that this guy Prince made some kind of deal with Witness Protection, and they're trying to preserve his identity."

Andrew thought for a couple of seconds. "Can you find out if they have any kind of ID on this Prince?"

"Not a problem," Barbara typed Prince's name and widened the parameters of the search. Several more seconds passed. "Hmm, that's weird."

"What?"

"I just did a search for any kind of identification of Nick Prince."

"And you didn't find anything?"

Oracle shook her head. "Nothing at the DMV, nothing at Social Security, not even a birth certificate."

Aha, Andrew thought to himself. "In other words, except for the fact that he has a criminal record, there is no proof that he ever existed?"

"Basically, yes," Barbara turned around. "Of course, it could mean that he wasn't born in this country."

"It could also mean that he was never born, period." Andrew walked over to his workstation.

Oracle turned her wheelchair towards him. "What are you doing?"

Andrew had begun to type. "A hard target search of my own."

"And where exactly do you intend to look?"

"I think that you know perfectly well where I'm going to look," said Andrew as he began to type on the screen.

Barbara put a confused look on her face. "Andrew, I don't know what you're---"

"Cut the bullshit, Barbara. I've spent the last two years around people who work very carefully. I'm a slow learner, but I do know when I'm being played," Andrew didn't turn from the screen but his voice grew more hostile. "You don't trust me and you never have."

Barbara considered this for a few seconds. "Andrew, I---"

"You can break into the government's high risk, ultra-complicated databases but you can't solve a simple Z-cube algorithm code of the gangsters in this city? Give me a break."

Oracle realized that Andrew had her in check. "Andrew, knowing where you come from and knowing your past, did you really think we were just going to trust you blindly?"

"Blindly, no. But considering that we came to you, told you exactly what was happening here, and that we could help, I would think that we would be entitled to a little good faith."

"You didn't tell us that you and your friend were felons."

Andrew winced at this but didn't back down. "Would you have worked with us otherwise? Besides, someone who is committing all kinds of privacy violations and misdemeanors doesn't exactly have the right to take the moral high road."

Oracle pondered this for a few seconds. "You and your friends work for one of the most corrupt and morally bankrupt law firms in the world," she said coldly. "It's because of Wolfram & Hart that felons like the Penguin and the Mad Hatter get sent to Arkham rather than in jail where they should be. It's because of your law firm that Maroni and Falcone have as long a reach as they do. They put a lot of evil in this world, and you expect us to just help you?"

Andrew looked up at the screen. "Well, say what you want about our system but it is capable of doing some top-notch research."

"What are you talking about?" asked Barbara.

"I mean," said Andrew gesturing towards the screen, "that I just found Nick Prince. We were wrong about him. "

"What? How?" Barbara seemed a little surprised by what was happening.

"Prince isn't a new player. He's an old one, a very old one."

Andrew had just finished putting the limited information that they had on Nick Prince into the Angel-Slayer database, a stronghold that combined the remaining data from the Watcher's archives with the extensive records kept by Wolfram and Hart. Though the database still had several kinks in it, it was still very good at locating information on the undead.

Oracle looked at the screen, a little unsure at what was on it. She could hardly be blamed, though, as the main thing on appeared to be a composite of some kind of drawing of a face. The computer distorted it a little but even the untrained observer could see that there was something inhuman about it. "What the hell is that?"

Andrew looked at the screen himself. "According to this, the man who has the underworld of Gotham in a tizzy has been among us for over two hundred years."

"The drawings are that old?"

"He was in France during the Reign of Terror. While the battles between the rich and the poor were unfolding, Nicholae, 'the King of Darkness' led a rebellion against aristocrats who had gotten their fortunes under unsavory circumstances, mainly traffickers in prostitution and slavery."

"There were a lot of those," said Oracle. "What makes you so sure that this is the same man?"

Andrew scrolled down the screen further. " Some of the men he struck against were killed, but far more often they would swear allegiance and turn control of their enterprises over to others in their organizations. Those involved would later pledge their fealty to Nicholae." He looked at Barbara. "Sound familiar?"

"What else is he connected with?" asked Barbara.

"According to this, Nicholae can also be connected to working as the head of a family of pickpockets in London in the 1840's, a medicine show in the Wild West, a landowner in Russia before the Communists took power, a bootlegger during Prohibition…." Andrew shook his head. "I don't think I've ever seen a vampire like this before."

"What, vampires aren't allowed to have criminal records?" asked Oracle.

"No, it's just…" Andrew thought for a second. "When you read the lore about vampires, the main thing that, past or present, the books are drawn to is how vicious and bloodthirsty they are. I don't think I've ever read about a vampire whose history reads like a rap sheet."

"What do you think this means?" asked Oracle.

Andrew shook his head. "I'm the wrong person to ask about this. I've only been reading the Watcher's guides and history for less than a year. For all I know, maybe this Nicholae is typical of a certain order of vampires."

"An order? You mean this vampire might belong to some kind of tribe that works like this?"

Andrew thought about this. "I've never heard of such a thing," he finally said. "Which doesn't mean that it isn't possible. It would explain how your city has so many vamps who know how to operate outside the law."

"So how do we proceed?"

Andrew's angry look returned. "So now that I have helpful information you're willing to trust me with the details?" he said haughtily.

"Look, there's a larger issue here----" Barbara began.

"Save your argument. I realize you had reasons not to trust us. I don't accept them but I understand it. I am willing to forgive and forget." Andrew paused. "On one condition."

"What is it?"

"What we need from you--- and your fellow crime-fighters in and out of uniform--- we get. No bullshit, no games." Andrew fixed Oracle with a look of authority that he would have been incapable of wearing a year ago.

"You have the nerve to ask this from us?" said Barbara.

Feigning a self-confidence he wasn't sure that he had, Andrew stiffened his look. "We are more than capable of doing this without you. Right now there are only three of us in Gotham City. I make a phone call, you'll have ten times the people here. "

"How is that an effective threat?" Barbara asked.

Andrew considered this for a few seconds. "If it gets out that the law enforcement in Gotham, costumed and un-costumed, were incapable of handling this latest rash of murder and mayhem, how long do you think it will be until guys like Thorne and the Joker are running the city? You're barely holding this town together, one more push and you'll be drowning."

This was a bluff so egregious that not even Angel or Faith would have tried it. The only reason that Andrew was able to manage it with a straight face was by doing his most defiant Jean-Luc Picard tone with a Benjamin Sisko attitude.

The former Batgirl studied Andrew for a very long time. Finally she agreed: "I'll talk it over with the others. You should know right now none of us take well to being threatened."

"Well, you haven't left us with a whole lot of options." Andrew hoped his tone didn't give away the relief he felt at the fact that he was being taken seriously. "One last thing."

Oracle was turning around when he spoke up. "What now?"

"This vampire is a minimum two hundred twenty years old, probably fifty or sixty more than that. " Andrew knew that he was going to sound like one of those women on Profiler but he couldn't help it. This was like one of those shows. " As a general rule, vampires who manage to make it past a century are usually very crafty and extremely dangerous. Given the fact that he's got a criminal record that even for this own is impressive and what he might already have managed to pull off in your city so far, you may be dealing with the undead Professor Moriarity."

Oracle shook her head. "Comparing him to a fictional character isn't helping with your credibility."

"Would you rather I compare him to the Joker?" Andrew said sharply.

"You're assuming a lot with no information," Oracle countered. "Hold off your theories until you have more proof."

Neither of them knew how much Andrew was underestimating the danger posed by Nick Prince.