by Blake Vanier
Each child blinks out of view as they put on the bracelets. When they have all disappeared, the door cracks open. A moment later Iona feels a tug on the string and follows the pull into the hall. Two Erohsian guards in formal attire emerge from the banquet room, leading a small figure dressed in dark robes. That must be Nero. Iona holds her breath as the guards pass. She only starts to breathe when the tug on the line in her hand brings her back to reality. We’re okay. They can’t see us. The guards lead Nero down the hall and to one of the elevators that goes to the higher portions of the building. Hopefully, this goes better than practice…
The elevator opens and Nero is forced toward the back. Iona imagines Ryder taking his position in the corner of the elevator and Korbin moving in next. One of the guards selects a restricted level higher up and scans his eye for clearance. He pushes the close door button right as Iona feels a tug on the line; she squeezes through sideways as it shuts. She squishes up against another invisible body and the door, keeping as far away from the Erohsians as possible.
Iona looks at Nero under his black hood and sees him smiling, staring right back at her. Can he see us?
One guard smacks Nero on the side of the arm. “What are you smiling about? The only prisoners who go to this floor are the ones that never leave with their minds intact. They’re going to put your brain through a blender, Human. What did you do to deserve such a ceremony?”
Nero dips his head.
“Okay, then. Hold your tongue while you can, because it’s a luxury you won’t have when they start working on you. There’s really no reason they’ll hold back―” The guard holds his hand up to his ear piece. “Yes, we have him, and we’re on our way now… Yes, sir, we’ll change the plan. We should be there shortly.” The guard looks down at Nero. “Well, it looks like they’re not wasting any time. You’re going straight to Capping and Extracting. Aren’t you a lucky one?” he asks, selecting a floor several stories higher.
The elevator continues upward. Iona tenses for the coming task, visualizing the seamless movements they practiced with the Borukins.
Please, don’t trip.
The elevator stops, and the door begins to open.
“I’m not going,” Nero says to the guards. He looks at the other children out of the corner of his eye.
The guards look at each other, smiling. “So, there’s a little fight left in you after all?”
“I always find it funny that you can make just about anyone lead the way to their end with the proper encouragement,” the other guard pulls out a thin retractable baton. “Isn’t that right?” he asks Nero. Nero shakes his head.
The guard whacks his leg with the stick. Nero lets out a yelp, sinking just a little before righting himself.
The guard hits his legs again. “Lead the way and I’ll stop.” The stick lashes out two more times.
“Okay!” Nero cries, tears in his eyes. “I’ll go.”
“Who says you can’t teach a Human?” the guard holding the elevator open says.
The other guard chuckles. “Isn’t that the truth?”
By the time Nero exits the elevator, the rest of the children are already out and waiting by the side of the hall. Nero looks at Iona, showing a quick smile.
Thanks, Nero.
The guards prod Nero down the hall and direct him to a secured metal door.
“This is the end of the road. If you’re going to beg, now is the time to do it,” one of the guards says.
Nero remains silent while the guard has his eye scanned. The door clicks and he pulls it open.
“Suit yourself,” he says, pushing Nero through the door.
Iona crosses her fingers as the last guard enters the doorway and the door closes. She visualizes Ryder sliding a thin piece of metal in the doorjamb to block the latch from catching. “Did you get it?” She whispers.
“I think so,” Ryder says. “Everyone good with the plan?”
“Are you sure it’s a good idea to throw the grenade so close to Nero?” Thea asks.
“I’ll only do it if I have to,” Iona says.
“And Grebson said he can take it,” Ryder says. “We have to keep with the plan. When you’re ready, Iona.”
Iona drops the line, pulls out the large cylinder grenade, and feels her way around Thea and Korbin, up to Ryder. “Okay, I’m ready.”
“Let’s do this.” Ryder opens the door.
Iona rushes through, quickly trying to make sense of her surroundings. She picks out Nero, but freezes as five light-infantry Erohsian soldiers, the two guards, and a few scientists turn toward the door. Soldiers?
Suddenly, she is slammed from behind and topples over with a yelp.
“Hostiles. Take cover!” a soldier yells.
Iona struggles to untangle herself from the mess of limbs. The soldiers move away from Nero and take cover behind tables and other electrical equipment.
“Throw it,” Ryder yells.
Iona pulls herself free and throws the grenade at Nero.
31
Getting Out is the Hard Part
Nero
“This is the end of the road. If you’re going to beg, now’s the time to do it.”
Nero keeps his head down. We’ll see what you say when my friends rescue me.
The guard opens the security door. “Suit yourself,” he says, pushing Nero through.
The room is large and surprisingly open. There are several well-kept consoles in the middle with holographic displays and several larger projectors to the left. On the right, there is a closed doorway. In the far back is a single chair on a small platform. It has light brown leather padding and arm rests with straps. Above it are metallic arms, curled up like a spider hanging from a web. Three scientists turn, and five light-infantry soldiers snap, weapons at the ready.
“Declare yourself,” a soldier yells.
“Private Bramble and Private Marcus, escorting the Human prisoner for probing by orders of Dr. Grantov,” one of the guards stammers, looking at the weapons trained on them.
Dr. Grantov walks forward. He is wearing a white uniform and is cradling a small clear container with a metal object in the center. “Yes, finally. Bring him here. We have work to do.”
The guards push Nero forward. “Is the prisoner really so dangerous? Why all the muscle?” Bramble asks.
Dr. Grantov strokes the clear container. “The light infantry are escorting an important item. I hope he’ll have some information on it. Strap him into the chair. We’ll begin immediately.”
Nero gawks at the soldiers. He shifts his perspective and sees a slight blue glow around their bodies, crisscrossed by gentle pulsing red lines. How are they going to get past these guys? His heart starts to accelerate. Bramble and Marcus shove him forward.
Two assistants appear and lead Nero toward the padded chair. The arms above the chair make small movements as they approach. Nero resists their pull, imagining the capping device scrambling his brains. Where are they?
The door to the room opens; everyone stops to look. Nero shifts his perspective to see Iona’s green glow with the darker lines of the invisibility talisman woven over her body. Korbin and Thea slam into her. They tumble through the doorway with a yelp.
“Hostiles. Take cover!”
The soldiers fan out, ducking behind the tables and equipment.
“Throw it!” Ryder yells.
Iona throws a blue glowing object at him, the size of a soda can. It bounces on the ground and rolls to his feet. Its brightness intensifies.
Uh-oh. With hardly a thought, he kicks the object at the closest group of soldiers preparing to fire at his friends.
The glowing object slides under the feet of one of the soldiers. “’Nade!”
The object erupts into a pincushion of electrical bolts of energy. The electricity pierces the surrounding lab equipment, moving in straight lines unless metal is in its path. The metal guides the electricity, until it reaches an edge, where it fragments outward like the roots of a plant. Someti
mes, the electricity swirls in midair like little eddies in a stream.
Nero is caught by the expanding front. His whole body goes rigid. His vision darkens and his head begins to feel light. His body is released after a few moments and he sinks to one knee.
Nero’s guards and the scientists fall unconscious, along with the soldier standing directly over the explosion. The two soldiers on either side of the explosion fall to their knees, and one who was farther away staggers backward, tumbling into Nero.
The children run forward, using their lepisents to zap the soldiers who are struggling back to their feet. The soldier who tripped over Nero untangles himself and pulls up his weapon. Korbin shoots him with Aether, making the soldier’s suit glow. It does nothing to slow him down. Korbin dives out of the way as the weapon cracks sharply, scattering pieces of the lab equipment everywhere.
“Together!” Ryder yells.
Ryder, Iona, and Thea zap the soldier and Korbin joins in as soon as he rolls back to his feet. The soldier shakes violently from the Aether. His suit brightens. With his perspective shifted, Nero sees the red lines surrounding his body glow more intensely as though they were little streams of lava. Then, as if a light bulb had just burnt out, the lines flash and disappear. The soldier crumples to the ground.
“That was messy,” Ryder says. “At least there aren’t any alarms yet.”
Korbin walks over to help Nero up. “So far, that’s an improvement over your rescue mission.” Korbin pulls up a guard’s hand and uses his fingerprint to unlock Nero’s cuffs.
Ryder points to the last soldier they knocked out. “Yeah, but did you see Nero take out this one? Nice job.”
“I meant to do that,” Nero says and rubs his side. “Thanks for coming.”
“You’re family.” Korbin smacks Nero on the back. “Of course we’d come.”
“That was a lot tougher than I thought,” Iona says. “Do you know why there were actual soldiers?”
Nero looks around and sees the doctor lying on the ground. The clear box is just a finger width from his hand. Nero picks it up and looks at the metal piece secured inside. His heart jumps. “Hey, Thea!”
Nero hurries over to her with a smile from ear to ear.
“My necklace!” Thea gives Nero a hug. “I can’t believe you found it.”
“Nice find, Nero,” Ryder says. “You’ll be Thea’s hero forever now.”
Thea, Korbin, and Iona wrestle with the clear box, trying to crack her necklace free, while Ryder hands Nero some clothes and gear from his satchel.
He gives Nero one of the invisibility bracelets. “And here’s an invisibility bracelet for the way out, if we need it.”
Nero takes the bracelet. “But I can’t use Aether to make this work.”
Ryder pulls out a spare doorman from his pocket. “Grebson said you could use this, somehow?”
Nero shifts his perspective and sees the bright pulsing glow of the doorman. Can I really use this like the stick in the park? He reaches out to it with his essence. With a little coaxing, he feels Aether flow into him. “Yeah, cool,” he says, smiling. “I can definitely use this.”
“Moltrik Aether works really well against the Erohsians, but since we don’t have a lepisent for you, you can use this if you need.” Ryder hands him a dart gun. It is the same design he used in Blue Horin Bay. “Grebson made it.”
Oh, great. “Thanks,” he says with less enthusiasm.
“Of course.” Ryder turns away while Nero changes, touching his small earpiece. “Hey, Sosimo, we have Nero and are getting ready to leave. What should we do with the guards? There were a lot more than we expected.” Ryder looks around and notices a series of cells in the side room. “We could lock them in the prison cells… Okay, we’ll do that and remove their helmets… Yes, we’ll be careful.” Ryder takes his finger off his earpiece and walks to the other children just as they are breaking open the box. “Help me put the Erohsians in one of the cells over there.”
“What for?” Korbin asks. “Can’t we just leave?”
“Our exit is way below us, so we’ll want to sneak as far as we can before the alarms go off,” Iona says. “They won’t be sleeping for much longer.”
Ryder nods. “Exactly.”
The children walk into the cell room made of steel. There are electronic panels on each door.
“Hey, look.” Iona runs up to a cell. “Somebody’s in here.”
Lying on the bed with an I.V. drip and health monitor equipment is a man, covered by a blanket. Other than the heart monitor continually beeping, he appears to be dead.
“He looks Human,” Korbin says. “What are they doing to him?”
“I wonder if they’re drugging him,” Iona says.
Thea grabs two bars of the cell and sticks her face as close as possible. “He looks sick.” She then turns to Ryder. “We should free him.”
Ryder looks at the eye scanner security mechanism on the door, similar to the device the guards used.
“Korbin, help me pull the smart-looking Erohsian over here. Let’s try scanning his eyeball,” Ryder says.
Ryder and Korbin drag the Erohsian over to the door and hold his eye open to the scanner. A prompt for a security code comes up.
“Dang. That’s not going to work.” Ryder looks around and shakes his head. “I’m not sure what to do. Let’s finish moving the Erohsians into the other cell, then I’ll ask Sosimo. Iona, will you remove their helmets… or any other communication devices they might have?”
Iona nods, and the children get to work moving the Erohsians. When Ryder goes for the fifth soldier, on the far side of the room, he stops and turns toward the others. “Hey. Who knocked this one out?” Everyone shrugs.
“Could the grenade have got him?” Korbin asks.
Nero looks at the Aether and notices the pulsing lines of red are still present around the soldier’s slightly glowing body. “He doesn’t look like he got zapped like the others.”
Iona shrugs. “I don’t think we should waste time arguing about results.”
“Good point.” Ryder grabs the soldier’s arm and pulls him into the cell with the others.
They lock the cell and Ryder touches his earpiece again. “We’re all done, but we ran into a little situation. It looks like there’s a Human in one of the cells. Should we try to free him?”
“No, he’s not awake. It looks like he’s being drugged or something. We tried to open the cell, but it asked for a code as well… No, we haven’t used any of the doormen yet… Okay, we’ll give it a shot and leave soon.”
“What did he say?” Thea asks.
“Sosimo says that it’s our call. His friends who are helping us would probably appreciate it, but we need to hurry. Our ticket out of here won’t be around all night. They’re setting up at the fortieth floor now.”
Thea jumps up. “I say we save him. No one should be left here.” Her shoulders drop and she looks to the others. “It’s sad.”
“We can spare one doorman,” Iona says. “Can’t we?”
Ryder nods. “It should be okay.”
“Then let’s do this. Put on your glasses.” Korbin pulls out his doorman, locks onto the cell door, and blasts it with a jet of Aether.
The heat causes the security panel to curl up, hiss, and pop almost instantly. Liquid metal drips down the bars until he can pull the door open. Korbin flips the doorman over to use the cold end. Instantly, the heat on the children’s faces vanishes.
“That was awesome,” Nero says. “Did Sosimo teach you that?”
Korbin spins the doorman around in his hand. “He sure did.” He slides it into his pocket.
The children step into the cell to inspect the man. His face is speckled with black, and on the far side, his eye is consumed completely by black. His chest moves ever so slightly.
“What did they do to him?” Thea asks.
“I saw this guy in the industrial district!” Nero says.
Korbin turns to him with his eyebrows raised. “
Oh, yeah? Was he at your birthday party, too?”
“Not now, Korb. We need to get him up,” Ryder says. “Pull that thing out of his arm.”
Iona pulls off a piece of tape holding the I.V. down and removes it from his arm. A drop of blood almost too dark to be real beads at the spot.
Thea shakes the man’s chest and smacks his face. “Wake up. We need to go.” After a moment of prodding, he remains unconscious. “What are we going to do?”
“Great. This is just what we need,” Ryder says. “I guess we can try to carry him out.”
Iona shakes her head. “That’s a big risk. We could all end up in here if we try. We won’t be able to sneak or move as quickly as we need to.”
A piercing alarm suddenly hammers on the children’s eardrums.
Korbin throws up his hands. “Dang it, why does this always happen?”
“What are we going to do?” Thea asks, her voice shrill.
“We need to go,” Ryder says. “We don’t have a choice.”
“So we just leave him?” Thea asks.
“It’s horrible, but we have to. We can’t carry him thirty some floors while we’re being chased.” Ryder touches his earpiece. “An alarm just went off. We have to leave the other person. He’s not waking up… We’ll hurry.” Ryder turns to the others. “It sounds like the alarm isn’t because of us, so it’ll actually provide a little cover. But we still need to get the heck out of here, and fast.” Ryder dashes out of the cell. He freezes. “Oh, no.”
A thick metal security door has slid over the exit. The children run up to it.
“This is a big door,” Korbin says.
“Thank you, captain obvious,” Iona says, eliciting a glare from Korbin.
Ryder inspects the multiple locking mechanisms. “This is going to be really hard.”
“We’ll have to work together,” Iona says.
Ryder points to the four corners of the door. “I think there is a bolt in each one of these locations. A lot thicker than what we practiced on.”
“We only have four doormen left. That means Nero won’t be able to use Aether,” Iona says. “He won’t be able to use the invisibility talismans.”