LTVS: Bugs in the System

*Do not read beyond **this point** if you want to avoid being **spoiled!***

***Layla the Vampire Slayer* episode**

AnnaGeeks as Jane Murphy

FreakinClever as Gabriel O'Malley

**Bugs in the System** is the fourth episode of Layla the Vampire Slayer and the first to feature guest players and to be set outside Little Rosewater. This transcription was performed by Blacksun388.

## Synopsis

Jane, Gabriel, Barnaby, and Robert take a bus to London and they have to endure each other’s company. Barnaby explains his latest Rugby exploits and Gabriel is fast asleep. Janet is fascinated with Barnaby’s heroic exploits and he seems confident it will continue for the whole year. Barnaby continues to regale them with tales of his genius and Gabriel seems… Less than impressed. They arrive at The Alexandria Conference Hall and they step out to a large tower and a mishmash of students in uniform. The officials try to keep the crowd under control and Mr. Penrose puts Robert in charge of the group.

They look around a moment and decide where to go. The front door opens to the building and out steps a gaudy dressed individual, Bruce Perriwinkle, who explains the rules of staying at the conference center and cues everyone up to mark them off attendance. Barnaby grabs the Robert and the 2 others from his school and Jane grabs Gabriel and the other boys and race to the front of the line. St. Thom Huell surges ahead after Barnaby, in a masterstroke of genius, uses his voice to act like a teacher and tells people to stand aside giving them an opening. Jane tries to find a rather large fellow and convinces him to push through the crowd for him to great effect. Her team pushes past them and Barnaby charges forth to be blocked by the large guy. Barnaby tries to distract the guy to some effect to move him from their path. Jane and Gabriel’s group moves forward and to the building and Jane gives a taunting memento to Barnaby of his loss. They get to the front and register with the front desk. Robert seems exasperated that they lost and that Barnaby pulled him through to the front of the line.

They go to the elevator and see Jane and Gabriel take the last lift to their floor. They step out to their floor and look over the hotel hall. It’s a very fancy hotel with a computer terminal in each room and everything accessible to a computer in 97 is controlled and a state of the art air conditioning unit is in the room. They settle into their room and Jane begins exploring the network. She looks through the functions and tries to overcome the security functions to no avail. She redoubles her efforts and penetrates the network. She copies a file of quiz questions and messes with the climate control in the other’s rooms. Gabriel checks out room service and orders a bag of crisps.

Later Barnaby and Robert part ways with the girls as they move up the flights of stairs. They open their door and are greeted by a blast of arctic air. Robert opens the windows and resets the climate control. Barnaby goes to check on the girls, Janet and Violet, and finds their hotel room is very warm. They return and get a hot chocolate from the vending machine. Robert tries to explore the system and Barnaby tries out the bed’s massage function. Jane tries to memorize cram the quiz answers and then makes sure the door is jammed closed while Gabriel primps himself. The hours pass until 11AM. The two schools are called down to compete in the Quiz face off and they meet down in the lobby. After some trash talk between them they reach the lobby and Perriwinkle’s publicist, Ms. Augustine, hands Gabriel a signed poster he requested and explains to the group all the rules. With that they all walk through to the ballroom which has been converted to a contest stage with Bruce Perriwinkle standing at the podium like a gameshow host. Gabriel struggles with his tie and Jane fixes it while Robert fixes Barnaby’s.

Bruce introduces the quiz challenge and the rules. They go to the general knowledge round and Gabriel picks up many points and Robert does well. Barnaby struggles at some of the questions and Jane, having crammed the answers, seems to forget a few of them. The score stands at Rosewater: 6 and Huell: 3. The science round is hot competition and Robert is on fire for the round. Rosewater 9 and Huell 10. The sports round comes and Bruce seems to have trouble, checking his cue cards. They hear weird clicking as he does. The sports round is again a competitive round which brings the score to Rosewater 20 and Huell 18.

Strangely Bruce seems to be a bit agitated about something and calls for an early break to the contest. Barnaby and Robert converse and notice that Jane seems unusually keen on the answers but don’t think about it much more. They go to lunch and try to eat. Bruce later comes in and grabs furiously at the sandwiches and departs just as quickly. They manage to sit at the same table with the others and Gabriel and Barnaby start with a bit of trash talk before talking about Bruce Perriwinkle and his odd behavior. Robert seems agitated to be beaten and Jane seems a bit flustered herself when Barnaby asks if they can go out and celebrate together to which she harshly declines.

Barnaby and Robert goes to their room from lunch and Gabriel comes down from his room to protest why all the crisps from the vending machine is gone. They meet in the hotel floor eleven as they do and have a rather antagonistic meeting. Suddenly something comes out from the elevator as the doors open. A body falls out of it and the back of the head seems opened up with the brain in the skull conspicuously missing. Robert inspects the elevator and sees there is nothing there. They are all shocked to see it is Bruce Perriwinkle and Jane peaks out from her room after locking down the elevator and tells them all to come into her room to get away from the situation. They all go into Jane’s room to try and sort out the situation. Barnaby tries to sort out the situation and call the front desk. Barnaby notes there’s no dial tone and Robert listens to the phone to hear an odd clicking noise. Barnaby tries to accuse Jane of getting rid of the body. Suddenly the elevator turns back on without Jane’s prompting and when Robert tries to go to the door it closes in front of them. Jane gets scared and tries to check the terminal for any other potential people in the system. The windows suddenly close and lock. Jane tries to open them but to no avail. Rob also tries to break in and together they start to override the code from the main server enough to unlock the room. Gabe passes a chair to Barnaby to wedge the door open so they all can get out.

Barnaby looks outside and sees the lights are off in the hall. Suddenly the group hear overhead scuttling and hissing and catch movement. Jane then pulls out a knife and Barnaby looks out in the hall where he sees a shadowy slithering bug. It hisses at him and rears up. Enter Initiative.

Garret sees a large black beetle on the wall and see it scuttle forward. Gabe tries to kick the wall and after readjusting his aim smashing it. The viscera from the beetle suddenly dissolves and blows away into the dust. Gabriel notes the shape of the bug while Barnaby looks at the brain cavity of the corpse. It seems to have buried into his skull and ate his brain before it popped out. Barnaby tries to call to Robert and suddenly can’t remember his name. Robert pulls him to the door and to the stairs. The others notice that Barnaby is acting strange. Jane and Robert stop him and Jane looks at the back of the head and she notices a moving black lump on his neck. Jane then takes her knife and cuts slightly under to flick it off his neck and stabs it with the knife. The group move to the stairs to try and to formulate a plan to escape the hotel….

As the run through the hallway Barnaby gets an idea and finds a janitor’s closet and tries to shoulder tackle the door. When asked what he’s doing he suggests getting buckets for their heads. Barnaby crashes through the door and into a supply shelf making a bucket fall onto his head. Jane uses her knife to cut out viewports for the buckets and suggests Robert make some weapons out of the chemicals in the room. They look for anything flammable and Rob manages to rig up a makeshift flamethrower with a bleach dispenser and sparking appliance. Barnaby and Gabriel grab brooms and Jane checks her knife over.

They go to the top of the stairs and see a camera tracking them. Jane disables it and suddenly a voice comes over the intercom telling them to leave. Jane tries to talk to it but it insists on making them leave. Jane and Robert try to jimmy open a panel and pry off a plate. From a vent below small black shapes start crawling up the wall. The scarabs begin their surprise attack and jump onto Jane and Barnaby. Enter initiative.

Jane smacks the beetle away but Barnaby is hit by both scarabs which slash at his face and neck. Gabriel yells at them to run for the stairs and tries to smash the beetles on Barnaby with the mop. He hits Barnaby in the face once and strikes one and it dissolves away. The scarabs charge forward and Jane dodges out of the way. They charge again on Barnaby and Gabriel and Robert spins around with the flamethrower and flames out a large group of them. Jane tries to kick several scarabs away. Barnaby goes to the panel and tries to pry it off so Robert can work and succeeds. He then tries to rip the Scarab off the back of his neck but makes it scuttle up further. Gabriel sees a scarab on his calf and tries to crush it against the wall. He fails and it tries to relocate closer to Gabriel’s head. It then tries to burrow into his skull. The ones on Barnaby’s head and side tries to burrow in and he manages to dislodge it. The scarab attacking Jane jumps at her but misses wildly. Two more scarabs join the fray and attack Robert landing on him. Another scarab jumps onto Jane and starts to burrow through the bucket. Rob focuses on the hacking despite the scarab and plugs his computer in to break into the door. He’s successful and the door clicks open. Jane tries to remove the scarabs from the others and takes her bucket off to smash it against Barnaby’s to crush both bugs. Barnaby tries to slam into Gabe and crush the bug on his chest and the one on Gabe’s neck. Barnaby then reaches out and grabs a bug before he runs through the door. Gabriel takes one last burst of flame and manages to keep them at bay as the close the door. Exit initiative.

They go into the room and look around while Jane does a quick medicine on Gabriel’s leg. Barnaby walks around and looks at the room around him. He looks around and sits down then notes something in his hand. He then sees an older gentleman with red silk robes sitting in the chair and a hole in the back of his head. It’s Julian Cranston. He slumps down and Barnaby recoils briefly. They turn on the TV which is useless without signal but at least they have light now. Rob goes to heavy fire door and tries to open them but can’t. The voice comes over the intercom and tells them they can’t leave. The voice says it wants their “facts” and identifies itself as “The Queen”. They find a server room and Robert and Jane make a plan to deal with the Queen. Robert tries to turn off the cooling system to the server room but the computer starts fighting back while Jane tries to make a virus to infect the server and overtax the system. Gabriel looks around the room for weapons and finds an ornamental saber from one of the walls. The Queen notes that they have caused the end of one major repository of facts and intend to do it again. Robert surmises they mean the original Library of Alexandria that had burned down before. Jane tries to think of alternate ways of attack and mentions Imogen to Barnaby remarking on the Scarab he’s holding. He finds some tupperware to keep it in and traps it. Jane tries to manipulate the system to expose the bugs to cold and hot. Seeing through the cameras she sees some people have left their doors and are gathering in the lower levels.

The people are starting to wander around the building and Jane tries to limit people going to the top floors. Robert suggests using the flamethrower to destroy the server room and Jane pulls up a map of the electrical system. She tries to trip the fire alarm with Robert’s help and people start flooding out. Jane pulls up the cameras inside the server room and see the large Scarab queen and a flood of scarabs. The group discuss their options for dealing with the Scarabs. As they do they see two more scarabs crawling towards them. Gabriel strikes his with the sword and Barnaby punches the one against him. With no other options they decide to blow up the top floor with the gas mains overpressurizing. They expose a gas line and robert devises a makeshift device to cause the gas to ignite. More scarabs pour in and jump at Jane, Barnaby, and Gabriel. Barnaby crushes his and Jane stabs hers into the ground. The group call the lift and charge into it meeting four other Scarabs. Robert hits the button on the lift to the bottom floor as the Scarabs charge. Jane dodges the one against her while the ones going for Gabriel and Robert latch onto their buckets and start chewing through and Barnaby’s latches onto his cheek and starts biting. Gabriel smashes his bug off his helmet and Robert tries to smash his off to no avail.

Suddenly an explosion rocks the building and makes the lift go into freefall but catches itself making people go prone shaking the bugs off. Jane gets up first and slashes at the bugs but misses. A bug attacks and latches onto Robert’s head and both Barnaby and Gabriel try to swat it off to no effect. Jane skewers one scarab but misses the other. One charges Jane and latches on to the back of her head. Robert grabs the Scarab on his head and tries to pull it off and does it. Gabriel takes his sword and cleaves the bug off of Jane’s head and cuts off her ponytail in the process. Barnaby then smashes the one in Rob’s hand against his head. Exit Initiative.

They look around and try to figure out how to get out of the elevator. Robert notes the elevator is on the brakes and cables are snapped. The group debate how they would have won or lost the quiz as firefighters come around and extract them from the elevator. Outside of the building Barnaby asks for Jane’s number to which she glares at him and writes down 999 on a napkin….

### Next time on Layla the Vampire Slayer…

*The club in town has been down for renovations and Layla and Imogen convince Robert and Barnaby to go out to the club when it reopens with their fake ID’s. After a night of debauchery and drinking they find themselves in a town trapped in time. A town that is caught up in the middle of a vampiric turf war and nobody is safe.*